• A new event has been added to the Trace class, TraceFinished - this fires after the Trace has been Compiled.
• The timings have been increased in accuracy from 6 Digits to 18 Digits! (This allows for some *really* accurate profiling!)
• There are now options on how to Sort the Category's of the Trace entries.

And that's about it! So to follow up on the summary this article will explore each of the above changes in Detail.

The TraceFinished Event.

This event and what it lets us do is one of the few Items in the Framework SDK that's actually been populated with information, so below as well as discussing the Event I'll include some of the documentation.

To set up the TraceFinished Event it's just wired up as normal: -

	void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		Trace.TraceFinished += new System.Web.TraceContextEventHandler(Trace_TraceFinished);
	}

Then in the Event you can actually Access ALL of your Trace calls in the form of a property on the TraceContextEventArgs object called TraceRecords.

The TraceRecords object contains a collection of TraceContextRecord  objects, which expose the following properties (ms-help://MS.MSDNQTR.v80.en/cpref/html/T_System_Web_TraceContextRecord_Members.htm): -

So some sample code to print out these values might look something like this: -

        void Trace_TraceFinished(object sender, System.Web.TraceContextEventArgs e)
	{

		foreach (TraceContextRecord TCR in e.TraceRecords)
		{
			Response.Write(TCR.Message + "<br />");
			Response.Write(TCR.Category + "<br />");
			Response.Write(TCR.ErrorInfo + "<br />");
			Response.Write(TCR.Message + "<br />");
		}

	}        

It's a real shame the timings are not exposed as it would be useful (to me anyway) to be able to Log the Trace to a Database without having to do my own Trace Logging. The Timings would be a great help in spotting parts of your site that start to break down.

Timings 

The best way to show the different timings is to show the HTML it output's, look how long some of those number are! Here's an ASP.NET 2.0 Trace: -

	void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
	{
		Trace.Write("Aardvark", "is Alphabetically First!");
		Trace.Write("Zebra", "is Alphabetically Last :(");
		Trace.Write("Helecopter", "is Somewhere in the Middle Alpahebetically");

		Trace.TraceMode = System.Web.TraceMode.SortByCategory;
	}