Extracting the contents of a trace file

In this recipe, we will extract the contents of a trace (.trc) file using PowerShell.

Getting ready

We will need to use the x86 Version of PowerShell and/or PowerShell ISE for this recipe. This is unfortunate, but some of the classes that we need to use are only supported in 32-bit mode.

In this recipe, we will use a previously saved trace (.trc) file. Feel free to substitute this with a trace file that is available.

How to do it...

Let's take a look at how we can extract the contents of a trace file:

1. Open PowerShell ISE as an administrator.
2. Import the SQLPS module:

   #import SQL Server module
   Import-Module SQLPS -DisableNameChecking

3. Import additional libraries. These are needed to use our TraceFile and TraceServer classes. We do this as follows:

   Add-Type -AssemblyName "Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91"
   
   Add-Type -AssemblyName "Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfoExtended...