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WHY YOU SHOULD BE USING EXTENDED EVENTS
While Extended Events have been around since the release of SQL Server 2008, they have not been
as popular as one might expect for such a powerful troubleshooting feature. You might still be
wondering then if now is a good time to begin using them. This section addresses that question by
reviewing three of the primary reasons why people are now using Extended Events, along with some
examples demonstrating when you might choose to use them.
SQL Server Roadmap
The i rst reason to consider using Extended Events now is driven by Microsoft's diagnostic tools
road map for SQL Server. According to Microsoft, the tools most people currently use for trouble-
shooting, SQL Trace and Proi ler, are slated for retirement in a future version of SQL Server. Their
replacement, as you can probably guess, is Extended Events; and even SQL Server 2012 includes
new functionality for Extended Events, whereas SQL Trace is starting to be left behind. Fortunately,
it's very likely that whatever you do today with Proi ler you can also do with Extended Events.
If after using SQL Server for many years you've built up a library of Proi ler based monitoring ses-
sions, all is not lost, as there are several migration options and aids available for you. Microsoft
provides some migration mappings in some SQL Server DMVs for people who want to migrate
between the Proi ler and Extended Events, while boB “The Tool Man” Taylor has recently released
an actual conversion tool called SQL PIE (Proi ler Into Events) that will be downloadable soon from
Codeplex.
Graphical Tools
The second reason to use Extended Events now is that SQL Server 2012 delivers out-of-the-box
what Extended Events in SQL Server 2008 lacked, a graphical user interface (GUI). Unlike other
new SQL Server features that were embedded in SQL Server Management Studio, the adoption of
Extended Events was hindered by this lack of a GUI. Instead, learning a new T-SQL command set
stood in the way of using them, along with the need to know how to query XML data. Although
a GUI tool was written by a community member for SQL Server 2008, you had to be interested
enough in Extended Events to i nd and then use it. Even now, you can probably begin to see why
Microsoft had to deliver improvements in SQL Server 2012 if they were ever going to realistically be
able to retire the SQL Trace components.
Fortunately, Microsoft did respond, and SQL Server 2012 includes a native graphical interface for
Extended Events built into SQL Server Management Studio. Now it's possible to create, deploy, and
monitor reasonably complex Extended Events sessions without having to use any T-SQL commands
or query XML data. Of course, there are always benei ts if you choose to do that, but they're no
longer compulsory as they were in SQL Server 2008.
Low Impact
Finally, if the preceding two reasons aren't enough to persuade you to begin using Extended Events,
then consider the nearly zero overhead that using them has on SQL Server. Extended Events is often
called “lightweight” for good reasons. First, it is embedded deep within the SQL Server engine,
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