How to get counter type for WMI SQL counters?

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How to get counter type for WMI SQL counters?

Niranjan Shaiwale

SSChasing Mays

Points: 627
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May 25, 2005 at 6:10 am

#87565

Hi,

I am using WMI to build a performance monitor. One of the counters I am looking at is DB Transactions per second.
I am using Win32_PerfRawData_MSSQLSERVER_SQLServerDatabases class for fetching the counter.

It gives me values like 6560, 6566 etc. which are raw values. But I want to convert them to actual values or cooked value
which should be same what windows performance monitor will display.

For that I need its counter type from which I will have to come up with some formula to get cooked value from raw value.
But my problem is I don't see this class documented any where and hence I don't know the counter type for these SQL classes.

It will be great help if anybody can tell me how to get counter type of any counter.

Thanks,
Niranjan

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Yelena Varshal SSC-Dedicated Points: 34286 More actions · Answer 1

Hi,

The following class that contains TransactionPerSec counter is documneted:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmisdk/wmi/win32_perfformatteddata_msdtc_distributedtransactioncoordinator.asp

Win32_PerfFormattedData_MSDTC_DistributedTransactionCoordinator

One can just assume that the type could be similar (NO Garantee). Type for it say uint32. TransactionsPerSec

Data type: uint32

Access type: Read-only

Qualifiers: CookingType("PERF_COUNTER_RAWCOUNT"), Counter("TransactionsPerSec"), PerfTimeStamp("Timestamp_PerfTime"), PerfTimeFreq("Frequency_PerfTime") Transactions performed per second

There is an unformatted class that contain the same property, looks the type is the same, but everything else is different.

Win32_PerfRawData_MSDTC_DistributedTransactionCoordinator

TransactionsPerSec

Data type: uint32

Access type: Read-only

Qualifiers: CounterType(65536), DefaultScale(0), PerfDetail(100) Transactions performed per second.

See also Win32_PerfFormattedData_ASP_ActiveServerPages

Let us know if it helped you and send me a code example if you think it is OK

Yelena

Regards,Yelena Varsha

Niranjan Shaiwale SSChasing Mays Points: 627 More actions · Answer 2

Hi Yelena,

Thanks for the info that you provided!

I explored the things little more and found that the Win32_PerfFormattedData classes are only

applicable to windows XP and not for Win 2k or NT versions. There you get only the Win32_PerfRawData

classes. Problem is Win32_PerfRawData_MSSQLSERVER classes are not documented and hence we can not get the counter types

for the counters in these classes and hence we can not decide what formula to be used for counter value calculation.

There is another way to get cooked values. We can use Perfmon's interface to get the values, but there, for many counters you need to know the instance name in advance whereas if you are using WMI, you can loop through all instances whitout having to know their names. As far as I know Perfmon also uses WMI to retrieve counter values.

Here is my code. It is very simple. It accepts the name of the counter and class in which the counter lies and retrieves the value.

I have removed some validation part from it to make it look simple.

Public Function GetMetricValue(ByVal ClassName As String, ByVal MetricName As String, Optional ByVal NameSpaceToBeUsed As String = "\root\cimv2", _

Optional ByVal AdditionalMetricName As String = "", Optional ByVal Filter As String = "") As String

Dim objConnection As New ConnectionOptions

Dim objScope As ManagementScope

Dim objQuery As ObjectQuery

Dim objPC As ManagementObjectSearcher

Dim objMgmt As ManagementObject

Dim strLocalComputerName As String

Dim strMetricValue As String

Dim strLogMessage As String

Dim strAdditionalMetricName As String

Dim strAdditionalMetricValue As String

Dim strFilter As String

Dim strWMIQuery As String

Try

If strLocalComputerName <> m_strComputerName Then

objConnection.Username = m_strUserName

objConnection.Password = m_strPassword

End If

objScope = New ManagementScope("\\" & m_strComputerName & NameSpaceToBeUsed, objConnection)

If strAdditionalMetricName <> "" Then

If strFilter <> "" Then

strWMIQuery = "SELECT " & strAdditionalMetricName & "," & MetricName & " FROM " & ClassName

strWMIQuery = strWMIQuery & " WHERE " & strAdditionalMetricName & " = '" & strFilter & "'"

Else

strWMIQuery = "SELECT " & strAdditionalMetricName & "," & MetricName & " FROM " & ClassName

End If

Else

strWMIQuery = "SELECT " & MetricName & " FROM " & ClassName

End If

objQuery = New ObjectQuery(strWMIQuery)

objPC = New ManagementObjectSearcher(objScope, objQuery)

For Each objMgmt In objPC.Get

If objMgmt(MetricName) Is Nothing Then

GetMetricValue += " , "

Else

GetMetricValue += objMgmt(MetricName).ToString+ ", "

End If

GetMetricValue = ex.Message

'Log Error.

strLogMessage = Now() + vbTab + "GetMetricValue" + vbTab + ErrorCodes.UNIDENTIFIED_ERROR.ToString + " : " + ex.Message + vbTab + ClassName + vbTab + MetricName + vbTab + NameSpaceToBeUsed + vbNewLine

Call LogInformation(m_strLogFileName, strLogMessage)

Finally

dispose objects here.

End Try

End Function

Thanks,

Niranjan

P.S. - I was not able to update the thread for few days, sorry for that.

claymen Valued Member Points: 63 More actions · Answer 3

The easiest way to grab this information is to pull them out of wbemtest which can enumerate and present information on every WMI class.

This is how I retrieved them and use it now as it has been faster than trawling through documentation on msdn.