Also available are Precise Insight™, which provides an end-to-end breakdown of the end-user response time of multi-tier applications; and Precise Inform™, which creates performance-degradation alerts and reports based on information collected by Insight and Indepth.

Instance level
Using Indepth, you can see which instance-level resources are causing performance problems. For example, you can drill down to see whether the root cause is excessive CPU or I/O resources, flawed database design (which creates locking problems), or internal SQL Server problems (which cause waits in resources such as latches and data buffers).

Resource consumer level
To determine which resource consumers are responsible for your performance problem, Indepth for SQL Server drills down another level to identify which entities (database users, programs, client machines, and so on) were consuming resources during a specified unit of time.

SQL statement level
Indepth probes even further to identify SQL statements and batches that are causing problems. This includes SQL statements that consume the largest amounts of resources, long-running SQL statements, and short but frequently executed SQL statements.

SQL statement resource level
For each SQL statement or batch, Indepth for SQL Server shows the resources that are causing waits. For example, you can determine whether an SQL statement is CPU- or I/O-bound, or whether it is affected by the excessive resource use of another SQL statement. Once it has identified a problem, the program can use its robust analysis utilities to focus on SQL statements and database objects that are causing problems.

Analyze problems
Using Indepth for SQL Server, you can quickly analyze SQL statements, database objects, and SQL Server instances to uncover the specific causes of performance problems.

SQL statement analysis
Indepth presents the SQL Server access path in detailed steps, and displays the statistics needed to understand each step.

Database object analysis
For each database object, Indepth for SQL Server shows the statements that access the object. For example, you can find all SQL statements that perform full table scans on all tables with more than a million rows, or you can identify the indexes that are scanned in full index scans. You can even identify unused indexes. Having the ability to analyze SQL statements and database objects allows you to determine whether your performance problems are caused by poorly written SQL statements or inefficient object design.

Instance statistics for analysis
Indepth for SQL Server continuously collects instance and database statistics from the Windows® Performance Monitor command, and saves them in the Performance Warehouse. This enables you to correlate application performance metrics with instance and database performance metrics, then analyze them to help solve problems.

Improve performance
Once you have analyzed your performance problems, you can fix them. Inefficient SQL statements and poorly designed database structures are the leading causes of performance problems in SQL Server environments. Indepth features built-in utilities to tune these components and improve performance.

Change SQL statements
To solve common SQL shortfalls, you can store SQL statements in a logical cabinet and folder hierarchy. You can populate it with statements appearing in the Current Activity and Recent Activity workspaces, or with manually written statements. Then you can examine stored statements to locate ones that meet your current requirements. You can also modify a statement and assess the impact of your modifications on the statement’s access plan.

Step-by-step performance management
The easy-to-use, comprehensive approach of Indepth for SQL Server guides you through performance management from start to finish—from proactive monitoring and problem detection to problem identification, analysis, resolution, and verification.