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    <p>As long as you're using SQL Server, and as long as you have (or can have) centralized connection-creation logic, you can use the <code>CONTEXT_INFO</code> feature: <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187768.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187768.aspx</a></p> <p>We do something like this to track DB connections in a multi-user server-side application. Every time a new DB connection is created (reused from connection pooling, really, but "created" in ADODB/ADO.Net code):</p> <pre><code>DECLARE @ContextInfoBinary binary(128); SET @ContextInfoBinary = Convert(Binary(128), 'XX' + Replicate(Char(0), 36) + 'Up to 90 characters of connection info - username, page, action, etc') SET CONTEXT_INFO @ContextInfoBinary </code></pre> <p>Later, when you want to "track" the connections, you can convert the specified range of the context-info back to VarChar content:</p> <pre><code>SELECT RTRIM(hostname) AS hostname , hostprocess , RTRIM(program_name) AS program_name , CASE WHEN SubString(Context_Info, 1, 2) = 0x5858 THEN Replace(Convert(VarChar(90), SubString(Context_Info, 39, 90)), CHAR(0), '') ELSE 'UNKNOWN' END AS ExtendedConnectionDescription --More stuff here, depending on what you're looking for FROM master.sys.sysprocesses </code></pre> <p>Some considerations:</p> <ul> <li>We moved to this concept specifically because of connection-pooling issues with the Application Name feature. It's important to us to be able to track blocking causes down to specific users and processes, at any given point in time.</li> <li>This adds a DB command to be executed for <em>every</em> connection created - this may or may not represent significant overhead, depending on your application design</li> <li>This sample uses VarChar (up to 90 characters); if you need to track NVarChar(extended character) data, your space drops to 45 characters</li> <li>In this example we're leaving 36 bytes that could be used for some other purpose, eg for preventing triggers from executing for some connections.</li> <li>You can output the value to a trace explicitly using <code>sp_trace_generateevent</code>, as outlined in this related question: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1049656/how-do-you-access-the-context-info-variable-in-sql2005-profiler">How do you access the Context_Info() variable in SQL2005 Profiler?</a> </li> </ul> <hr> <p>UPDATE:</p> <p>Only after re-reading your question did I realize you seem to be explicitly looking to add info to Traces only, and not so much for ad-hoc analysis of your current connections (which is more what I associated the use of "Application Name" with, sorry); the only useful approach I've seen specifically is the <code>sp_trace_generateevent</code> call. If you're going to do this, I'd advise you to <strong>also</strong> add the connection_info, as it won't cost you any more (you alsready have the db round-trip for <code>sp_trace_generateevent</code>) and will definitely help you with other types of analysis later on.</p>
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    1. POHow can I track calling code in a SQL Server trace?
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    1. POHow can I track calling code in a SQL Server trace?
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    1. COThere are also security ramifications of this procedure which you may or may not want to give arbitrary applications. An additional factor to consider.
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    2. CO+1, This is close. And almost perfect. I'll get back to you.
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      1. USMichael J Swart
    3. COThis will do! Thanks Tao. There's some post-processing to match the custom event (UserConfigurable:1) with the statistics of the same process. But I can do that.
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      1. USMichael J Swart
 

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