G’day,

On Saturday 14th April I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday 136 in Wellington, New Zealand.

My presentation is titled “Extended Events – A whirlwind tour”  - I first gave the presentation at SQL Saturday 76 in Auckland back in January and again at Christchurch code camp  a little while later.

This will probably be the largest audience that I’ve given the presentation to and I’ve enhanced it a little since I last gave it.

The presentation is firmly based around  SQL SERVER 2008, and as SQL SERVER 2012 has just been released I pondered whether to upgrade the presentation also. In the end I decided to leave it with SQL SERVER 2008, as

• The vast majority of people will be using the 2008 version.
• The lack of a built in UI forces us to learn a scripting approach to XEvents – giving us a solid understanding of what’s going on.
• I’ll be able to compare a few of the new features – such as the addition of a UI and lots more events.

The last twice that I have given this presentation, I asked the question “who currently uses XEvents” and I’ve been surprised at the small number of people who actually are using them.

Perhaps that’s due to the lack of built in UI – of course we could always use Jonathan Kehayias’s extended events add on.

Or maybe it’s due to the connection they have with XML.

Whatever the reason, I think gaining a strong understanding of the fundamentals of XEvents (even if you’re using the UI features in SQL SERVER 2012) will pay huge dividends.

The biggest reason I feel that people should learn about Extended Events are that.

• They are extremely flexible.
• Fully scriptable with DML.
• Can be modified on the fly (meaning they don’t have to be stopped and restarted.)
• Going forward they are going to take over from the deprecated SQL SERVER profiler

Right, time to check my flights to Wellington.

have a nice day.

Cheers

Martin.