SQL Denali - DReplay/XEProfiler or RML Utilities

Many of you have used the RML utilities that Keith Elmore and I built and provided to the community on the download center.   One of the features of the RML utilities was the ability to do sophisticated replay operations.   I was queried about the new DReplay and thought this would make a nice post.

As my e-mail exchange highlights; Keith and I spent numerous hours with the DReplay team going over various designs, pitfalls and issues we had experienced, worked around or otherwise encountered and much of the feedback was folded into the DReplay design.  So when Bob Ward asked me the question "Should I use DReplay or RML?" my answer was that I had no reason to believe the DReplay does not provide the functionality the RML would and that Keith and I have no plans to enhance anything in RML replay for Denali at this juncture.

When you combine the additional logic that profiler replacement is targeted for you will have two very nice features that carry forward many parts of the RML feature set, right in the box.   I really like the new grouping and sorting capabilities that are being added to the XEProfiler so you can take a trace and answer a question like, "What query took the most CPU in aggregate within the filtered window?" and you don't need to call CSS SQL Server Support to help you answer this question from a captured trace.

RML will still be around and I have been working on updates to handle the new SQL Denali ODBC client version and such but we are pleased that the development team carried forward and integrated several of the big features from RML into the shipping product.

From: Robert Dorr
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 12:02 PM
Subject: RE: SQL Profiler: Load testing

 

Thanks for asking.

No RML based still profiler based but Keith and I spent weeks with Shirley and the team walking them through our code base, telling them about the edge cases and such. They took many of the features from RML and added them into the code base, including over 50% of our test suites. In fact, they had an entire virtual machine that I setup for them with source, build scripts and the tests that they were walking through.

I think we have a much better opportunity with the new DReplay design to do the things that RML did than we ever had, built right into the box.

Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 10:58 AM
To: Robert Dorr
Subject: RE: SQL Profiler: Load testing

 

Out of curiosity, is that feature based on RML codebase? From a quick look, there are many similarities.

Bob Dorr - Principal SQL Server Escalation Engineer