Yesterday, I wanted to use SQL Server Profiler to check what was happening on the database side of an application I am developping. However, SQL Srever Profiler was giving me the following error message:

In order to run a trace against SQL Server you must be a member of sysadmin fixed server role or have the ALTER TRACE permission.

In order to resolve this, you need to issue the following SLQ query in the master database:

GRANT ALTER TRACE TO username

Replace username by the username you want to use to access the database in SQL Server Profiler.