Chapter 17. Using Extended Events
I introduced you to Extended Events in chapter 13, where we used them to capture information on blocked processes. Now, I’d like to dig deeper into Extended Events with some very specific (and super-useful) scenarios. We’ll walk through how the technology works, get it set up for various purposes, and look at what it can provide you.
As I described earlier, Extended Events is a native SQL Server technology that allows for continuous monitoring and capturing of specific things happening on the server. You create a session that monitors for whatever events you’re interested in, and it logs information from those events when they occur. You can then review those logs at your leisure.
In Windows (and SQL Server) terminology, an event is something like a log message sent from one piece of software to another. A piece of software has to be programmed to produce the event, and another piece of software registers to be notified when the event happens. With Extended Events, different pieces of SQL Server produce events, while the actual Extended Events system registers to receive those events.