Performance Monitor consists of two monitoring tools, Snapshot Monitor and Event Monitor. Snapshot Monitor captures information for a specific point in time. Event Monitor provides summary information for a period of time.

Performance Monitor helps you analyze performance, tune SQL statements, and identify exception conditions.

Snapshot monitoring allows you to analyze long-running transactions to get interim information before they complete.

Event monitoring allows you to collect information about transient events that would be difficult to monitor through snapshots, such as deadlocks and transaction completion.