XML Input File Reference (Database Engine Tuning Advisor)

Database Engine Tuning Advisor can use an XML input file to tune a database. This XML file designates which databases, tables, workload files or tables, and tuning options to use for the tuning session. You can also use this file to specify a user-specified configuration to perform "what-if" analysis.

Your Database Engine Tuning Advisor XML input file must conform to the DTASchema.xsd schema. This schema can be found in the installation directory of the SQL Server 2008 instance that you are using.

It can also be found at https://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/. It documents all of the elements used when defining a Database Engine Tuning Advisor tuning session.

A Database Engine Tuning Advisor XML input file contains a hierarchy of XML elements, each containing text or other elements that specify the tuning session settings. The Database Engine Tuning Advisor XML input file must conform to the standards for well-formed XML, so all element names are case sensitive. Elements are specified using Pascal case, which means that the first character is uppercase and the first letter of any subsequent concatenated word is uppercase.

All element values must conform to XML naming conventions. For more information about these conventions, see XML Textual Content in the MSDN Library.

Note that this reference is not comprehensive. It only includes those elements that are used in the XML Input File Samples (DTA). For information about all the elements you can use to define XML input, refer to the Database Engine Tuning Advisor XML schema, DTASchema.xsd.