Learning Extended Events in 60 Days

This post will serve as the landing page for a series I am calling 60 Days of Extended Events. The purpose of these posts will be to help somebody progress through the Extended Events Concepts and become more proficient at implementing and using them.

The 60 days of XE will be a two month series running from September 1, 2015 through October 30, 2015. The posts will go live only on weekdays. So while it is 60 calendar days, it will end up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 articles.

These are the  types of articles designed to take 5 to 15 minutes to learn a concept and move on with the work day. The articles are designed to build on previous concepts.

As the posts go live, I will return and update this page with the article title and link.

XE Table of Contents

1. Shredding the Actions attached to an Extended Event – 01 September 2015
2. How to View the Metadata for Deployed Extended Event Sessions – 02 September 2015
3. How to View the Metadata for Running Extended Event Sessions – 03 September 2015
4. Some Supporting Objects of Extended Events – 04 September 2015
5. Packages as they Relate to Extended Events – 07 September 2015
6. What is an Object in Extended Events? – 08 September 2015
7. Categorization within Extended Events – 09 September 2015
8. Introduction to Events within Extended Events – 10 September 2015
9. The Anatomy of an Event – 11 September 2015
10. Extended Events and Fixed Schemas – 14 September 2015
11. Actions in Extended Events – 15 September 2015
12. Storing/Consuming Event Payloads – 16 September 2015
13. Data Types for your Event Payloads – 17 September 2015
14. Custom Data / Maps / Lookup Tables for your Event Payloads – 18 September 2015
15. Predicates and Event Data – 21 September 2015
16. Comparison Predicates – 22 September 2015
17. Predicate Order is Critical – 23 September 2015
18. Putting it all together into a Session – 24 September 2015
19. Extended Events GUI – 25 September 2015
20. Deployed Session Settings – Metadata – 28 September 2015
21. Deployed Session Metadata for Events – 29 September 2015
22. Deployed Session Metadata for Actions – 30 September 2015
23. Deployed Session Metadata for Targets – 01 October 2015
24. Set Operations and Metadata – 02 October 2015
25. Backup Deployed Sessions – 05 October 2015
26. Extended Event Management Power Tools – 06 October 2015
27. XEvent Metadata via PoSH – 07 October 2015
28. Action and Predicate Metadata with PowerShell – 08 October 2015
29. Target Metadata with PowerShell – 09 October 2015
30. Simplified Session Backups – 12 October 2015
31. Intro to Reading Event_file Data – 13 October 2015
32. Dynamically Read event_file Data – 14 October 2015
33. Better Practices for Reading Event_file Targets   – 15 October 2015
34. Jumping into the ring_buffer – 16 October 2015
35. Know before you Go – Target Settings – 19 October 2015
36. Matching Events into Pairs – 20 October 2015
37. Parsing Matched Events – 21 October 2015
38. Using and Reading the Histogram – 22 October 2015
39. Bean Counting and Events – 23 October 2015
40. Seeing Short-Circuiting at Work – 26 October 2015
41. Intro to Internals Via XEvents – 27 October 2015
42. Azure SQL DB and XE – 28 October 2015
43. Default Sessions – 29 October 2015
44. Tricks and Treats with XE – 30 October 2015 (Happy Halloween)

At the end of this two month series, there is still just too much to cover. Since I have plenty more in my queue, I have decided to extend the series into overtime. I have no guarantees on how many more posts I will add to the series from here, but I will continue to add more into the series until the queue is depleted.

1. Log Files from Different Sources – 30 December 2015
2. Customize The XEvent Log Display – 31 December 2015
3. Filtering Logged Data – 01 January 2016
4. Hidden GUI Gems – 02 January 2016
5. A Day in the Stream – 04 January 2016
6. Waiting, is it a Bad Thing? – 04 January 2016
7. Alter Event Session – 07 January 2016
8. Extended Event Help Queries – 19 July 2016
9. Query to Find the Right Event – 21 July 2016
10. Better Method to Parse Session XML Data – 01 August 2016
11. Using XEvents to Audit Queries – 08 August 2016
12. Finding the Right Path – 24 August 2016
13. Deprecated Features via XEvents – 30 August 2016
14. Index Maintenance Operations – 20 December 2017
15. Feature: XE Profiler – 22 December 2017
16. XE Permissions – 25 December 2017
17. XE System Messages – 27 December 2017
18. Correlate Trace and XE Events – 28 December 2017
19. An Introduction to Templates – 30 December 2017
20. Enterprise Thinking with Default Sessions – 9 September 2015
21. Correlate SQL Trace and Actions – 1 January 2018
22. Dynamics AX Event Session – 2 January 2018
23. Sharepoint Diagnostics and XE – 3 January 2018
24. Checking the Health of your CLR – 16 January 2018
25. Profiler for Extended Events: Quick Settings – 5 March 2018
26. Extended Events File Initialization Failure – 9 March 2018
27. Monitor Database Offline Events – 15 November 2018
28. How to Translate Event Duration – 20 November 2018
29. Azure Data Studio and XEvents – 21 November 2018
30. Ghost Cleanup in SQL – 28 October 2014
31. Audit Database File Size Changes (v1) – 26 November 2014
32. Database File Size Changes – 27 November 2018
33. Where did the Database Go? – 7 April 2015
34. Track Trace Flag Changes – 6 December 2018
35. Missing Backup Files (a story) – 10 December 2018
36. Using XE to Solve a Synonym Issue – 12 April 2016
37. Quick and Easy XE for Azure DB – 24 December 2018
38. How to: XEvents as Profiler – 25 December 2018
39. Upgrading From SQL Server Profiler – 26 December 2018
40. How to: File Target use in Extended Events – 27 December 2018
41. SQL Servers Black Box Recorder – Def Trace – 28 December 2018
42. SQL Servers Black Box Recorder – system_health – 29 December 2018
43. SQLs Black Box Recorder – sp_server_diagnostics – 30 December 2018
44. Finding Installed Event Sessions – 31 December 2018
45. Finding Application Session Settings – 1 January 2019
46. Checking Your Memory with XE – 2 January 2019
47. Event Tracing for Windows Target – 3 January 2019
48. Automatic Tuning Monitoring and Diagnostics – 4 January 2019
49. Short Circuiting Your Session – 5 January 2019
50. Audit SQL Agent Jobs – 17 January 2019
51. Execution Plans in Extended Events – 17 June 2015
52. XEvents and the Data Collector – 21 December 2012
53. Retention of XE Session Data in a Table – 3 Jan 2014
54. Reading Extended Event File Session Data – 21 June 2015
55. Trapping Online Index Operations – 29 Jan 2015
56. Audit who Dropped the Database – 7 April 2015
57. Extended Events and Data Types – 14 April 2015
58. Energy Savings and Extended Events – 10 June 2015
59. Database Drops in SQL 2012 – 1 July 2015
60. New Extended Events for 2016 – 6 July 2015
61. Database Settings Changes – 8 July 2015
62. Extended Events Removed from 2016 – 22 July 2015
63. Shredding XML in XEvents – 26 August 2015
64. An Experiment with Deadlocks – 25 March 2019
65. Database Recovery Monitoring with XE – 10 April 2019
66. Event Log File Paths – 20 May 2019
67. Mass Backup All Sessions – 22 May 2019
68. Implicit Conversion Insights with XE – 05 June 2019
69. Top 5 Methods to Easily Open Event Log Files – 07 June 2019
70. Get the Source of PREEMPTIVE_OS_PIPEOPS Waits – 13 June 2019
71. Audit DB File Sizes (Reboot) – 25 June 2019
72. Database In Use – 3 July 2019
73. Event Files on Linux – 9 July 2019
74. Server 2008 – Audit Logons – 17 July 2019
75. Creative Extended Event Sessions – 3 January 2020
76. Creative XE Sessions – Funky Data – 4 January 2020
77. Easy Audit Index Changes  – 27 December 2019
78. PowerShell to Backup XE Session – 10 Jan 2020
79. Window Shopping the Query Store with XEvents – 11 Mar 2020
80. Collation Conflict with Extended Events – 12 Mar 2020
81. Audit Logons with Extended Events – 20 April 2020
82. TBA

Some rather advanced uses and topic concerning Extended Invents. These are a little more time consuming.

1. TDE – TBA
2. Encryption – TBA
3. TLS – TBA
4. NUMA / Schedulers – TBA
5. TBA – TBA