XESmartTarget is the simplest way to write Extended Events data to a database table. But wait: there's more! XESmartTarget is the easiest way to process events without writing a single line of code!

XESmartTarget is a command line tool to help you working with SQL Server Extended Events. It offers the ability to perform custom actions in response to Events, in a way that is not possible by using the built-in targets.

While you are free to extend XESmartTarget with your own Response types, XESmartTarget does not require any coding. Instead, it can be configured with simple .json configuration files.

For instance, the following configuration file instructs XESmartTarget to connect to the server (local), hook to the Extended Events session test_session and forward all the events of type sql_batch_completed to a Response of type TableAppenderResponse, which will insert all events every 10 seconds into a table named test_session_data in the server (local), Database XESmartTargetTest, only the columns specified, only the rows with duration > 10000 microseconds.
It will also replay the sql_batch_completed events to the instance (local)\SQL2014 using the ReplayResponse Response type.

{
    "Target": {
        "ServerName": "(local)",
        "SessionName": "test_session",
        "Responses": [
            {
                //  JSON config files can contain comments
                "__type": "TableAppenderResponse",
                "ServerName": "(local)",
                "DatabaseName": "XESmartTargetTest",
                "TableName": "test_session_data",
                "AutoCreateTargetTable": true,
                "UploadIntervalSeconds": 10,
                "Events": [
                    "sql_batch_completed"
                ],
                "OutputColumns": [
                    "cpu_time", 
                    "duration", 
                    "physical_reads", 
                    "logical_reads", 
                    "writes", 
                    "row_count", 
                    "batch_text"
                ],
                "Filter": "duration > 10000"
            },
            {
                "__type": "ReplayResponse",
                "ServerName": "(local)\\SQL2014",
                "DatabaseName": "XESmartTargetTest",
                "Events": [
                    "sql_batch_completed"
                ],
                "StopOnError" : false
            }
        ]
    }
}

A complete description of all the setting you can control in the .JSON input file can be found in the Documentation.

Here is the output it produces:

And here is the output it produces in the database:

For the moment, the following Response types are available:

• CsvAppenderResponse
• EmailResponse
• ExecuteTSQLResponse
• ReplayResponse
• TableAppenderResponse

New Response types are in the works, such as GroupedTableAppenderResponse (groups data before writing to a table). Suggestions for new Response Types are more than welcome.

Check out the Documentation for more information.

XESmartTarget also includes a command line tool to convert .XEL files to .CSV.

Usage is very simple. Here's an example:

XelToCsv.exe -s c:\temp\events.xel -d c:\temp\events.csv

XESmartTarget is a .dll that you can use in your project. Not sure how to use it? No problem, look at Program.cs in the XESmartTarget project. It's super easy.