Template Configuration

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Template Configuration

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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February 15, 2018 at 9:09 pm

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Template Configuration

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call.copse SSCoach Points: 18052 More actions · Answer 1

Has anyone got a decent, plain English explanation of what XE can do for you? My eyes glaze over somewhat reading the below:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb630354(v=sql.105).aspx

It sounds like it may be useful but I've really no way of knowing from that...for instance the heading 'Correlating request activity with Windows ETW logs' the example is in English but I'm buggered if I know what it means, it seems to be saying XE can help you find out that slow disk reads are a physical I/O problem. Which solves what? Sorry to be dense and all.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736232 More actions · Answer 2

XE is a tracing system that can capture all activity occurring in SQL Server. This replaces SQL Trace/Profiler, which is a more heavyweight way of gathering activity. SQL Trace also lacks many of the events added post SQL 2008R2.

Jon Brune Old Hand Points: 373 More actions · Answer 3

I find XE easy to hate. Sure it's lightweight, but it's tougher to deal with and a pain to get into a table so you can sort through the data using good ole SQL. Sure, I could dust off my XML querying skills, but I use SQL day in and day out so I'm much more familiar with it. In any case, here's SQL I use to create an XE Session and then I usually just look at live data. I also included the viewsettings I use in case you would be interested.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736232 More actions · Answer 4

Thanks. I find XE cumbersome, but I am trying to fix that, or at least learn how to work with it better.

Robert Sterbal SSChampion Points: 11050 More actions · Answer 5

Jon Brune - Friday, February 16, 2018 1:31 PM
I find XE easy to hate. Sure it's lightweight, but it's tougher to deal with and a pain to get into a table so you can sort through the data using good ole SQL. Sure, I could dust off my XML querying skills, but I use SQL day in and day out so I'm much more familiar with it. In any case, here's SQL I use to create an XE Session and then I usually just look at live data. I also included the viewsettings I use in case you would be interested.

I find excel helpful to read an xml file. It does a good job of putting the file in a tabular format.

412-977-3526 call/text

Peter Schott SSCrazy Eights Points: 9675 More actions · Answer 6

Been trying to use XE, but they're not nearly as friendly w/ Azure SQL as they are w/ on-prem SQL. Trying to see real-time results just gives a bunch of XML. Anything else seems to require saving to Azure storage and not sure how well that parses. Sadly XE seems to be the only way to trace activity in Azure SQL unless you have a complete admin account. Profiler hasn't been updated to work with Azure AD MFA yet.

Overall, I do like what I've seen w/ XE so far, but it's still cumbersome for the cloud.

call.copse SSCoach Points: 18052 More actions · Answer 7

Thanks John, Steve and Robert. I have fiddled around now and have a basic understanding at least. Not for me right now, Profiler is going to be fine for me for the meantime, but I'm happy to know what it's about.