I’ve been using the online version of ClearTrace more and more lately.  When I get to a new client it’s just much easier to upload a trace file rather than install ClearTrace.

That means I’ve finally been adding more features to it.  The two latest features are around ease of use.

You can now upload a ZIP file that contains a trace file.  Trace files are already somewhat compressed.  Putting it in a ZIP file further compresses it by a factor of 8X or 9X in my testing.

That means you can start with a 100MB trace and end up with a 10Mb-12MB ZIP file to upload.  I’m consistently able to get over 150,000 events in a 100MB ZIP file.  That gives me a pretty good look at a system.

The second part of this is that files are now processed asynchronously.  After you upload a file you’ll be taken to a processing page that updates every few seconds with the number of rows processed.  It generally takes under a minute to process a 100MB trace file but I *hated* staring at a blank screen.

Give TraceTune a try.  It’s getting easier to use every day.