Survey: have you ever used these DMVs?

In this week's survey I've got four mini-surveys for you, all to do with in-depth performance analysis.

I'd like to know whether you've ever used each of four DMVs that look progressively more deeply into the workings of the database engine.









I'll report on the results in a week or two and start blogging about using these – let me know if that would be interesting to you.

Thanks!

8 thoughts on “Survey: have you ever used these DMVs?

  1. I would be interested in learning more about these and how they can be used. I tend to be a clicker rather than a typer; but am willing to change. :)

  2. I’ll say that I’ve heard of all of them – whether I use them regularly to solve problems or simply know they exist is a different story. When a new version of SQLServer comes out I sit down and try out a few commands just to see what they do. Understanding what they tell me (or telling me something useful) takes a while to comprehend.

    For instance, I know what spinlocks are. However, the number of times that looking for spinlock counts pointed me to my problem has been low. So I have forgotten about that DMV.

    Personally I like tools such as Spotlight on SQL Server. It provides a nice graphical interface that shows each "part" of SQL Server that includes heartbeat like lines indicating traffic/activity. It correlates all of these DMV and shows the consolidated big picture. When something is "overheated" it turns red and the ECG line goes crazy – a simple click zooms in. Plus it alerts when there is unusually Low traffic too (as in – hey there aren’t 1,800 batch/req second today…like there has been for the past year..where’s the traffic? and might that be a problem?!) I originally saw the product as Spotlight on Oracle, 8+ years ago, and used it to tune our app during a large scale load testing event… and loved it.

  3. Like the "Green Smiley Gravitar", I like tools over queries as they abstract much of the tech-minutia that I’ve no time or budget to learn. Spotlight on SQL Server served me well for 6 years and the educational blurb on its drilldowns is about as much as I found I needed to know about a flagged issue. Doubtless your blog posts will awaken me to why I need to know about these views… Thanks for surveying and educating the uninformed.

  4. I had to vote "no" on all of them, because I’m stuck on 2000, and our 08 boxes aren’t even remotely busy enough to worry about.

    (yes, I’m trying to fix this problem :-) )

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