I would like to share with you BlocksTracer - a utility I recently developed.
BlocksTracer is a Monitoring (and diagnostic) tool helping to troubleshoot blocking and concurrency issues.
This tool monitors and captures SQL Server’s blocking locks that occur inside the database engine and provides an insight to this crucial information at real time so that when a blocking event occurs you get to know about it immediately on the spot.
In addition to real time notification all related data such as the blocking statement, the statement blocked, the blocking host, the host being blocked, program, database, duration of the block…. and more, are kept in a database allowing you to further investigate latter on. You can also perform various queries against this important data which will teach you a lot about the concurrency your database(s) provides. Armed with this information you now know what areas/ statements require a modification in order to improve concurrency which in terms will improve applications response time.
Running BlocksTracer on a production environment provides a central repository holding every blocking issue that occurred on any one of the servers being monitored.
To read more go to: http://www.sqlserverutilities.com
To download the Freeware version: http://sqlserverutilities.com/download/BlocksTracer.msi
-Yaniv
