Grant Fritchey has some advice:
While XML is, without a doubt, a giant pain in the bottom, sometimes, the best way to deal with Extended Events is to simply embrace the XML.
Now, I know, just last week, I suggested ways to avoid the XML. I will freely admit, that is my default position. If I can avoid the XML, I will certainly do it. However, there are times where just embracing the XML works out nicely. Let’s talk about it a little.
Just need to do a little victory dance here. I didn’t explicitly say “embrace the XML” but close enough…
I think the biggest problem DBAs have with XML is that they end up treating it like a dreadful task: I need to shred XML for an extended event. But to do that, I have to learn how to query it using this quasi-language, and so they get stuck trying to fuss with something somebody else did, moving symbols around in the hopes that they get the right incantation. By contrast, a day or two really focusing in on how XQuery and XPath work would clarify a lot and make the process much simpler.
There is a fair counter-point in asking how often you’ll use this, and if the answer is “probably never,” then poke through and just try to get it working. But I’ve got a bit of bad news: “probably never” is probably wrong.