Guru's Guide to SQL Server™ Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML, The

sp_proc_runner

Starting, stopping, and listing traces using stored procedures is handy, but what if you need to schedule these starts and stops? What if you wanted to trace until a given event on the server occurred or for a specified duration of time? Given how large trace files can become, you may want to schedule the tracing so that it doesn't run at all (or runs with a much slimmer event set) during periods of high system activity. This is what sp_proc_runner was designed to address. Sp_proc_runner runs other code. This other code can be a stored procedure, a T-SQL batch—you name it—sp_proc_runner doesn't care. It's a miniature scheduler that can run the code you supply for a given period of time or until a condition on the system becomes ...