This is a tool that is used by the Microsoft PSS team to analyze PSSDiag data. This tool has the capability of loading the Profiler Traces collected (provided ReadTrace is installed on the box).
In addition to this, it also loads the other .OUT files and the PerfStats script output file into the Nexus database. I use this tool regularly to analyze PSSDIAG data due to the following reasons:
1. Saves me time from manually opening each file and looking through them
2. Based on the graphs provided in the reports, I can quickly drilldown to the major bottleneck
The SQL Nexus reports act as a brilliant guide when you are analyzing PSSDIAG for the following scenarios:
1. High CPU
2. Blocking
3. High IO
4. General Performance Problems
Since, the SQL Nexus Reports use Reporting Services client-side report viewer, you can create your own reports to work against the Nexus database and then deploy them to the %appdata%/SQL Nexus/Reports folder. Once, this is done, the new reports would show up along with the defult reports every time SQL Nexus is launched.
What are the advantages of this tool?
1. Shows aggregation reports for the Profiler Traces loaded into it
2. Blocking and wait statistics information based on the PerfStats script output. This helps in analyzing blocking on the server
3. Since, the data collected are loaded into tables, you can run queries against the database to draw inferences. If you use these queries frequently enough, you can create your own reports and deploy them to the above mentioned location
4. You can export the data from the SQL Nexus Reports into files (.XLS,.PDF,.JPG etc) and send them as reports
5. The reports let you narrow down to specific time frames which makes analysis easier
Download location: http://www.codeplex.com/sqlnexus
Addition: April 4, 2011
A list of known issues documented with SQL Nexus:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverfaq/archive/2011/02/07/sql-nexus-and-rml-utilities-a-primer-on-the-issues-that-i-have-dealt-with-last-year.aspx
Addition: April 6, 2011
A very common issue that I worked on multiple times after which I realized that it warranted a blog post:
SQLDIAG: There are no instances of version 10 on this computer
