Sort Warnings Event Class

The Sort Warnings event class indicates that sort operations do not fit into memory. This does not include sort operations involving the creation of indexes, only sort operations within a query (such as an ORDER BY clause used in a SELECT statement).

If a query involving a sort operation generates a Sort Warnings event class with an EventSubClass data column value of 2, the performance of the query can be affected because multiple passes over the data are required to sort the data. Investigate the query further to determine if the sort operation can be eliminated.

Sort Warnings Event Class Data Columns

Data column name Data type Description Column ID Filterable

ApplicationName

nvarchar

Name of the client application that created the connection to an instance of Microsoft SQL Server. This column is populated with the values passed by the application rather than the displayed name of the program.

10

Yes

ClientProcessID

int

ID assigned by the host computer to the process where the client application is running. This data column is populated if the client provides the client process ID.

9

Yes

DatabaseID

int

ID of the database specified by the USE database statement or the default database if no USE database statement has been issued for a given instance. SQL Server Profiler displays the name of the database if the ServerName data column is captured in the trace and the server is available. Determine the value for a database by using the DB_ID function.

3

Yes

DatabaseName

nvarchar

Name of the database in which the user statement is running.

35

Yes

EventClass

int

Type of event = 69.

27

No

EventSequence

int

The sequence of a given event within the request.

51

No

EventSubClass

int

Type of event subclass.

1 = Single pass. When the sort table was written to disk, only a single additional pass over the data was required to obtain sorted output.

2 = Multiple pass. When the sort table was written to disk, multiple passes over the data were required to obtain sorted output.

21

Yes

HostName

nvarchar

Name of the computer on which the client is running. This data column is populated if the client provides the host name. To determine the host name, use the HOST_NAME function.

8

Yes

IsSystem

int

Indicates whether the event occurred on a system process or a user process. 1 = system, NULL = user.

60

Yes

LoginName

nvarchar

Name of the login of the user (either SQL Server security login or the Microsoft Windows login credentials in the form of DOMAIN\username).

11

Yes

LoginSid

image

Security identification number (SID) of the logged-in user. You can find this information in the syslogins table of the master database. Each SID is unique for each login in the server.

41

Yes

NTDomainName

nvarchar

Windows domain to which the user belongs.

7

Yes

NTUserName

nvarchar

Windows user name.

6

Yes

RequestID

int

ID of the request containing the statement.

49

Yes

ServerName

nvarchar

Name of the instance of SQL Server being traced.

26

No

SessionLoginName

nvarchar

Login name of the user who originated the session. For example, if you connect to SQL Server using Login1 and execute a statement as Login2, SessionLoginName shows Login1 and LoginName shows Login2. This column displays both SQL Server and Windows logins.

64

Yes

SPID

int

ID of the session on which the event occurred.

12

Yes

StartTime

datetime

Time at which the event started, when available.

14

Yes

TransactionID

bigint

System-assigned ID of the transaction.

4

Yes

XactSequence

bigint

Token that describes the current transaction.

50

Yes

See Also

Other Resources

Monitoring Events
sp_trace_setevent (Transact-SQL)

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance