Is it possible to capture a database trace on azure using T-SQL

Question

I know one can't run SQL Profiler against azure databases. I recently learned that SQL profiler is really just a front end for functionality that is implicit to SQL Server i.e. SQL profiler doesn't really do any capturing, it just starts and stops traces that are actually made by SQL server and that one can start, pause and stop traces using T-SQL statements.

I don't think one has any sort of direct access to the filesystem an azure database lives in, so if one could start a trace one would need to find a way to put that trace somewhere. Is it possible to capture traces on windows azure databases using direct T-SQL, or is the trace functionality simply unusable altogether on SQL Databases in azure?

Answer 1

You can use the Dynamic Management Views to diagnose performance problems. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff394114.aspx

The T-SQL you are referring to on non-Azure is sp_trace_start, which isn't a stored procedure on Azure.