Replay is the ability to reproduce activity that has been captured in a trace. When you create or edit a trace, you can save the trace to a file and replay it later. You can use SQL Server Profiler to replay trace activity from a single computer. For large workloads, use the Distributed Replay Utility to replay trace data from multiple computers.
This section describes how to use the replay features of SQL Server Profiler. For more information about the Distributed Replay Utility, see SQL Server Distributed Replay.
SQL Server Profiler features a multithreaded playback engine that can simulate user connections and SQL Server Authentication. Replay is useful to troubleshoot an application or process problem. When you have identified the problem and implemented corrections, run the trace that found the potential problem against the corrected application or process. Then, replay the original trace and compare results.
Trace replay supports debugging by using the Toggle Breakpoint and the Run to Cursor options on the SQL Server Profiler Replay menu. These options especially improve the analysis of long scripts because they can break the replay of the trace into short segments so they can be analyzed incrementally.
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