Enabling the Developer Dashboard in SharePoint 2010

Enabling the Developer Dashboard

The Developer Dashboard is not just for developers who write code. It is an important tool in the arsenal of the SharePoint Administrator.
Tools such as Microsoft's Visual Round Trip Analyzer are used to determine why a page is performing poorly. The downside of tools such as this is that they interrogate the page from the outside and so information such as database queries cannot be seen. We would have to use another tool such as SQL Profiler to see this information.
The Developer Dashboard brings this functionality natively to SharePoint 2010. It provides information, such as how a page is built, how it is performing, what database queries are being run and for how long, at the bottom of a page in report form. Administrators can use this information to pinpoint what is happening on a page.
In this recipe, we will enable the Developer Dashboard and view the report at the bottom of the page. This is done through PowerShell and can be scripted in the SharePoint environment.

Getting ready

In order to run PowerShell commands, you must be a member of the SharePoint_Shell_Access database role on the configuration database. You also must be a member of the WSS_ADMIN_WPG local group .

How to do it...

1. On the publishing farm server, select Start | All Programs | Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products | SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.
2. In the PowerShell command prompt, type in the following command:
   

   
   $db = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.
   SPWebService]::ContentService.DeveloperDashboardSettings;
   $db.DisplayLevel = 'On'; $db.RequiredPermissions ='EmptyMask';
   $db.TraceEnabled = $true; $db.Update()
   

3. Open a team site. You should see a screenshot similar to the following at the bottom of the page:

How it works...

The Developer Dashboard is a farm-wide setting. When you turn it on, the dashboard appears on page load at the bottom of the page.
The first line creates a reference to the necessary web service.
The RequiredPermissions parameter specifies who can see the Developer Dashboard.
Setting the trace level to true creates a new link called Show or hide additional tracing information... at the bottom of the Developer Dashboard.

There's more...

By default the Developer Dashboard is disabled.
There are three modes that can be set:

• On
• Off
• OnDemand

When the OnDemand mode is specified, a button appears in the upper right-hand corner of the page as shown here:

When clicked, the Developer Dashboard is shown, and when clicked again, it disappears.
This gives administrators the flexibility of enabling the Developer Dashboard without the need to make it visible always.

More info

The Developer Dashboard is available only with Windows authentication and is not available with SQL authentication.