Setting Tool Options and Layout
You can set options that configure what the Database Engine Tuning Advisor graphical user interface (GUI) displays on startup, the font it uses, and other tool functionality to best support how you use it. The practices on this page familiarize you with the options you can set, and how to set them.
Set the tool options
Start the Database Engine Tuning Advisor. On the Windows Start menu, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server, point to Performance Tools, and click Database Engine Tuning Advisor.
On the Tools menu, click Options.
In the Options dialog box, view the following options:
Expand the On startup list to view what Database Engine Tuning Advisor can display when it is started. By default, Show a new session is selected.
Click Change Font to see what fonts you can choose for the lists of databases and tables on the General tab. The fonts you choose for this option also are used in Database Engine Tuning Advisor recommendation grids and reports after you have performed tuning. By default, Database Engine Tuning Advisor uses system fonts.
The Number of items in most recently used lists can be set between 1 and 10. This sets the maximum number of items in the lists displayed by clicking Recent Sessions or Recent Files on the File menu. By default, this option is set to 4.
When Remember my last tuning options is checked, by default Database Engine Tuning Advisor uses the tuning options you specified for your last tuning session for the next tuning session. Clear this check box to use Database Engine Tuning Advisor tuning option defaults. By default, this option is selected.
By default, Ask before permanently deleting sessions is checked to avoid accidentally deleting tuning sessions.
By default, Ask before stopping session analysis is checked to avoid accidentally stopping a tuning session before Database Engine Tuning Advisor has finished analyzing a workload.