You might have already know that SQL Server Profiler and Trace are now deprecated. Even though it’s still available in SQL Server 2017, it will be removed in a forthcoming version. As an alliterative to Profiler and Trace, Microsoft is suggesting us to use the Extended Events (XEvents). In this article let us see a briefing about how Extended Events are comparable with Profiler and Trace.
Extended Events vs Profiler Trace
| # |
Extended Events |
Profiler and Trace |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Light weight and uses very little system resources. | Running profiler on the SQL Server will itself creates performance issues as it uses more system resource. Even SQL Trace uses more resource compared to XEvents. |
| 2 | Helps to trace and track more events. In SQL server 2017 Extended Event Session creation wizard, I could see 669 events. | Profiler and trace has around 235 events. |
| 3 | It will not impact the performance of the servers as profiler does. | Will impact the performance of the server while using them. |
| 4 | Can be used to run for longer period of time. | Not advised to run for longer period of time as it consumes more resource on production server. |
| 5 | Has built-in templates. | Has built-in templates. |
| 6 | Successor to Profiler and Trace. | Profiler and Trace are deprecated. They may be removed in a future SQL Server version (read more). |
Next Step
- Know more about Extended Events (XEvents).
- Identifying and logging blocks and deadlock using XEvents.