In Analysis Services 2005, there is a very cool feature that can save you a lot of debugging time, when you are trying to troubleshoot AS problems. This feature is called Flight Recorder. In essence, it’s a
trace that starts automatically when the Analysis Services service is started and it records information that can be viewed (and replayed, that’s the cool part) in SQL Server Profiler 9.0.

The trace itself can be configured as usual in the AS2005 server properties. What’s less obvious (at least to me!) are the events and columns that you wish to see in the FlightRecorder trace. The default format does not record queries or processsing requests for example.

BOL say that the flight recorder uses a template file called C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\OLAP\bin\flightrecordertracedef.xml so here we go, here are the steps I used to modify the default format of
the FlightRecorder trace.

• Create a new trace using SQL Profiler
• Display the trace properties and select the desired events and columns
• In the File menu, select Export > Script trace definition > For Analysis Services 2005
• Provide a name for the xmla file.
• Open the xmla file in your favorite text editor
• Copy the <Events></Events> section in the clipboard
• Open the file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.n\OLAP\bin\flightrecordertracedef.xml where n is your OLAP instance (MSSQL.2 if you installed SQL, AS and RS on the same box)
• Replace the <Events></Events> section with the content of the clipboard
• Save the FlightRecorderTraceDef.xml file
• Restart the AS2005 service for the new settings to take effect.

And voila!