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Analyze deadlocks with Sql Server 2005: Profiler DeadLockGraph object.

SqlServer Profiler 2005 contains some new features, one of which is the DeadLockGraph object. With this object enabled in the trace options you can visually see when deadlocks occur, what tables and statements are involved and who was choosen as the deadlock victim.

To do this you should start a new trace in the Sql Server 2005 Profiler. When you create a new trace and after you have connected to the sql instance you would like to monitor you have to select the events you are interested in. You can find them in the 'Events Selection' tab of the trace properties window. Here you have to check the 'Deadlock graph' event. You notice that as soon as this event is selected, a new tab becomes available in the trace properties window: the 'Events Extraction Settings':

If now while the trace is running a deadlock occurs you will be able to see the deadlock graph:

In this graph you really get a lot of information about the deadlock: The statements that are involved, the kind of lock, the victim, the spid of the deadlock process, ... And that's not all, if you right click on the graph you can export to an XML file. This file can then be opened with the Management Studio for further analysis.

The Sql profiler has also other enhancements, like for example the possibility to compare/merge the Sql Profiler data with the data coming from a Windows Performance Monitor. If you run a profiler trace and a perfmon trace at the same time you can then save the 2 trace logs and merge them ! But I will tell more on this in another blog message soon ;-)

"People Ready Business" and Microsoft Dynamics

Steve Ballmer and Jeff Raikes launched the Microsoft's People-Ready vision.
At the core of this is the idea that software that empowers people will help businesses achieves next level of productivity gains.A people-ready business knows that people are its most important asset, and it empowers its people to drive the business forward. When individuals realize their potential, your company realizes its potential.

What is the importance of this "People Ready Vision" on Dynamics software?
Technology can transform an organization. Technology must be designed in such a way that it enables our customers to accelerate returns on their biggest investment—their people.

One of the core themes for the Dynamics Wave 1 releases is around “roles based” user experience. The User Experience teams have done some amazing work in doing the deep anthropological research for each of the roles within business and this context is what is influencing the significant investments Microsoft is making in delivering user experiences that transcend both Dynamics and Office “personalized” for the specific role.

So, Dynamics-Nav 5.0 will be strongly focussed on the "role based user experience". You can expect a lot of it as the impact will be great. We will now have a software solution that was really designed from a user perspective and this is great news. Currently we know user profiles only from a security point of view. Now each role in the company will have focussed functionality and clear defined and visualised flows.
The good news doesn't stop with the role based focus of Dynamics-Nav. The 'people perspective' is also realised by making the MS office integration much stronger. MS Office is also redesigned with the 'people ready vision'.

Want to know more on People Ready business?
Check out following Links:

• http://blogs.msdn.com/satyanadella/default.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/default.mspx
• Watch Steve Balmer about People Ready Business

At Plataan we are preparing for "People Ready Training", but more about this later