What are ADO.NET Diagnostics?

The .NET Trace class provides a set of methods and properties that help you trace the execution of your code. You can use the properties and methods in the Trace class to instrument release builds.

Instrumentation allows you to monitor the health of your application running in real-life settings. Tracing helps you isolate problems and fix them without disturbing a running system.

In Visual Studio .NET projects, the Trace class is enabled by default. This means that code is generated for all Trace methods in both release and debug builds. End users can turn on tracing to help identify the problem without the program having to be recompiled.

The .NET Framework 2.0 includes Tracing support for the Microsoft ADO.NET data providers for fine-grained debugging of data access components across multiple tiers and into .NET Framework managed code, as well as native code.

DataDirect Technologies ADO.NET data providers have always supported tracing. Each of our data providers can trace the input arguments to all of its public method calls, as well as the outputs and returns from those methods (anything that a user could potentially call). The DataDirect ADO.NET data providers deliver additional tracing capability, including tracing input arguments to all public method calls and tracing outputs and returns from those methods (anything that a user could potentially call). Each call contains trace entries for entering and exiting the method. Provider-specific methods allow the data providers to trace all method calls to a user-specified trace file.

The DataDirect ADO.NET data providers contain PerfMon hooks that let you monitor the number of connections, connection pools and the number of connections in connection pools.