Israel's DBSophic has launched Trace Analyzer, a new free-to-download tool for SQL Server to help DBAs find out what's slowing down their databases, and Russian developer Perpetuum Software has released Silverlight Viewer for Reporting Services.
DBSophic's free Trace Analyzer tool pinpoints batches or specific parameter value sets that are consuming the most resources. It lets DBAs analyse trace events, stored in multiple trace files and trace tables. Users can view all the trace events analysed, de-parameterised, grouped and clearly arranged in a tree format and ordered by their resource consumption. The results display the total resource consumption and enable the user to drill-down to specific parameter value sets.
An interesting twist on Silverlight's capabilities, Russian developer Perpetuum Software's new tool works with SQL Reporting Services to provide screen graphics of reports and business data. The new product is compatible with Silverlight 3 offers a set of tools for developing graphical RIA and SaaS applications. Reports can be used in applications, run out-of-browser mode or directly on the HTML page. Perpetuum says that vector graphics are used to ensure high- quality displays which it says is hard to achieve when reports are simply converted to HTML.
Silverlight Viewer for Reporting Services features various preview and zooming modes, scrolling, interactive sorting, panning, navigation through the reports via hyperlinks, input of the report parameters and a search feature. Interfaces can be customised. All aspects of the Silverlight Viewer component behaviour can be controlled. Reports can be exported to PDF, Excel, HTML, CVS, XML, MHTML and TIFF.
The current version of Silverlight Viewer for Reporting Services supports SQL Reporting Services 2005. Perpetuum says support for MS SQL Reporting Services 2008 will come in the next release.