Ed Pollack takes us through the basics of extended events in SQL Server:
Extended Events are an excellent way to collect data about a SQL Server that provides a vast array of events that can be used for performance monitoring, troubleshooting, or auditing a server. In this article, I’ll explain the building blocks of Extended Events data collection.
While using Extended Events is not overly complex, building a reliable system to collect, parse, and store events over time without any data loss can be challenging.
This article walks through the steps to create, configure, and implement Extended Events in SQL Server, providing the prerequisite code and concepts to build an automated collection process.
Read the whole thing.