Dave Mason shares his story of moving from Profiler traces to Extended Events:
Thinking back, my initial reaction was probably something like “I don’t get it.”. XEvents just seemed like a new dog performing an old trick. Even though I concluded most of the SQL pros had already made the transition to Extended Events (XEvents), and that I’d be living in the past if I didn’t do the same, I continued to use Profiler. It’s too bad–my current employer at the time had SQL 2012 across the board. I missed a great opportunity there. Before I left that job, I stumbled upon this Paul Randal post. It helped me trouble-shoot a performance issue with a stored proc. “Ok, so there’s one thing XEvents can do that Profiler can’t do” I thought to myself. (Note: I don’t know if that’s a true sentiment or not–I never investigated further.) I also recall reading at least one of Jonathon Kehayias’ (b|t) posts about XEvents, but I don’t remember which one. Profiler would remain my go-to tool for the remainder of my time with that employer.
Read this in conjunction with Erin’s request.