Benefits of enabling extended events for SQL Sentry? any limitations or differences? Why isn't it the default?

Hey there gflores1023!

Jonathan Kehayias put together this great article that explains the differences.  There are plenty of others out there, and the same generic reasons apply to the benefits of switching to XE for SQL Sentry. Since SQL Sentry now only supports SQL Server 2014 and higher, we no longer have to worry about a version that doesn't have XE.  Therefore, there shouldn't be any limitations and I doubt you'll see any differences with the underlying data collection for SQL Sentry.

Top SQL collection uses XE by default on recent versions, and I believe it has for a few years now.

If you're looking to implement it in your deployment, I'd highly encourage you to do so.

Feel free to reach out with any more questions on it!

-BT