Ability to track arbitrary things as counters

[tbolon]

I have an internal requirement that could be adressed: we are using azure sql database, and performance counters for the database are only available through the sys.dm_od_performance_counters view.

My idea is to add an abstraction around performance counters to allow arbitrary providers to provide counters values.

It is similar to issues #28 and #46, but I do not want (for now) to expose them as performance counters for the system. It seems to be a lot easier to just provide IPerformanceCounterInfos instead of registering in the system new performance counters (it requires some admin rights and configuration to works).

This work will requires some steps:

• Create a new abstraction around the code which transform an ICounterGroup into IPerformanceCounterInfo
• Extract from CounterBusiness all works related to system performance counters in a new PerformanceCounterProvider. For simplicity, hard-code usage of thie provider into CounterBusiness
• Add a way to select the provider in xml configuration
• Provide provider's specific settings in xml.
• Create a new SqlDmvPerformanceCounterProvider which will create IPerformanceCounterInfo based on an sql server statement

I will track this work in my own "abstract-perfcounterbusiness" branch for now.

I will try to fix the issues #28 and #46 with this work. The plugin feature could requires some big changes in the code (copy/paste plugin assemblies, dynamic registration, dependency injection, etc.)

[tbolon]

I have created a WIP branch and PR to track this issue, please do not merge for now.

[poxet]

Cool! Tell me when it is done.

[tbolon]

Just submitted PR #58, which add a new custom provider system. I now plan to add a custom sqldmvprovider, which will use this new system.

[poxet]

That sounds great! I will se if I have some time to use that too.