Can I get sql profiler for sql2008 for free?

Question

Is it possible to get sql profiler for sql2008 for free or you have to have a license to get it?

i.e. it won't work with sql express

Answer 1

First. SQL Profiler does work with SQL Express. Second. You can get SQL Profiler with the Developer version of SQL, which is included with all MSDN licenses. However you will not be able to get it for free with SQL Express like you can with SSMS.

Answer 2

You can get SQL Profiler with the Developer version of SQL.
But how is written three answer before:

SQL Profiler is just a GUI on top of the TRACE functionality present in all editions of SQL.

So this ExpressProfiler is a free utility.
Alberto

Answer 3

SQL Profiler is just a GUI on top of the TRACE functionality present in all editions of SQL.

http://sqlprofiler.googlepages.com/ is a free utility which takes advantage of that. Probably all that you need.

Free of registration URL to download: http://code.google.com/p/sqlexpressprofiler/

Answer 4

I have been posting this to a number of older posts since I have been hitting them looking for the same answer. Just thought it would be nice if some more recent answers were here, hopefully they will still save people some time.

The ExpressProfiler is nice, I did try it but found it to be a bit too simple for my purposes. I found this article recently, http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/784905/Real-time-Tracing-With-SQL-Server-Express, and it has downloadable demo UI that is quite complete. It is much more configurable and has a few handy features like being able to define unlimited traces that will persist all trace options as well as column order. You can sort by column and group row data.

Answer 5

SQL Express 2008 Management Studio does not come with Profiler, so you will have to get a license for either a Workgroup/Standard/Enterprise edition.

Answer 6

SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition isn't free, but it's about $50 at NewEgg (or anywhere else):

Newegg.com product link

Developer edition is basically a re-branded not-for-production version of Enterprise, so it's got all the features Enterprise has, including Profiler. That's as close to free as you're going to get, since Profiler is not included with any Express products.

Answer 7

I just tried out the utility mentioned above: http://sqlprofiler.googlepages.com/. (New link is here). It got me the query text for what was going to the server, which is what I needed at the time. For $5, you can't go wrong by far. The only thing that worries me (and I'm not 100% sure on this), is that it looks like they want you to subscribe on a yearly basis, and the $5 looks like some sort of introductory special. For a tool that I will very rarely use, I would have preferred to pay $30, and be done with it.