How can I profile SQL-Server from a Linux Desktop ? - sql-server

Question

We are developing a .NET Core application on Linux.
We use JetBrains Rider.
I wanna to profile SQL-Server (remote or local) from my Linux dev machine.
How can I do that (from Linux) ?

Answer 1

You can download SQL-operations studio to manage SQL server on Linux:
However, a profiler is not included (at least not yet - AFAIK).
But I had the same problem earlier on with no profiler being present when having SQL-Server Express.
So I forked ExpressProfiler from Codeplex and fixed some bugs.
The resulting windows-forms application is here.
However, you can only run that with mono.
But because it uses a RichText-Control, it crashes frequently on mono.
Since I had the same problem as you, I ripped ExpressProfiler appart and created a console profiler.
The console-profiler works on .NET Core.
See here.
It captures all SQLs sent to the server, highlights syntax on the console (some problems with background switching that I haven't figured out, yet), but that's all it does. If you need execution duration or more filters than just the database, you need to add that yourselfs. Otherwise, you'll be fine.
The command line syntax is:
./sql_profiler --server {computername\instance} --username WebAppWebServices --password TOP_SECRET --db "The DB you want to profile";
or from the project:
dotnet run sql_profiler --server {computername\instance} --username WebAppWebServices --password TOP_SECRET --db "The DB you want to profile";
If you omit the username, it will attempt to connect with integrated security.
The command-line project is here.
If you don't want to compile it yourselfs, you can find a release here.
The beauty of this solution is that you can also run it directly on SSH, if you need to profile a sql-server that's not in your network.
If you standalone compile it, it's also not required that mono/.net/.net-core is installed on the server.
So you can skip CITRIX/RDP.

Answer 2

The other answer was helpful, but slightly outdated. Here's updated instructions.
Note that this doesn't work for all Entity Framework Core queries, see issue #2125 on GitHub.
Prerequisites:
Running the mssql-server-linux docker image
Install SQL Operations Studio (a fork of VS Code, cross-platform successor to SSMS)
Install the SQL Server Profiler Extension
(If you know what you're doing you can skip straight to step 12 below.)
I'm on Windows but have colleagues on Linux so tried to use cross-platform tools to set this up. As a baseline reference, here's a repro for checking if it works in your own environment:
Create new ASP.NET Core Web API Application (2.1) named FooBarBaz with this code added:
public class Item
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class MyDbContext : DbContext
{
public DbSet<Item> Items { get; set; }
protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
{
optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer("Server=localhost;Database=FooBarBaz;User=sa;Password=yourStrong(!)Password;");
}
}
Install Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore
Install Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer
Install Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools
Run Add-Migration InitialCreate
Run Update-Database to create and scaffold the database
Register context in ConfigureServices using services.AddDbContext<MyDbContext>();
Change the controller to this:
[Route("api/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
public class ValuesController : ControllerBase
{
private readonly MyDbContext _context;
public ValuesController(MyDbContext context)
{
_context = context;
}
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<Item>> Get()
{
return _context.Items.ToList();
}
}
Open SQL Operations studio
Connect to your Sql Server in Docker
Click on the database that was created (FooBarBaz)
Press ALT+p to start profiling
Run your web application and access /api/values
You should now see something like this in the profiler:
Again, the screenshots and instructions were written from Windows, but my colleague uses a Debian Linux distro where things work similarly.

Answer 3

The best option is now to use Azure Data Studio (which Microsoft releases as a native Linux application):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download-azure-data-studio
Then install the SQL Server Profiler extension:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/extensions/sql-server-profiler-extension