\nI've always liked the graphic showplan in SQL Server query analyzer. The biggest hassle with it came when you wanted to send the plan to a friend. Or maybe MS support, but support is your friend too… right? You could send screenshots (which had the annoying habit of never displaying those hover-over stats) or go back to textual showplan.\n<\/p>\n
\nSQL Server 2005 has XML showplan and I'd once gone as far as to attempt to write a transform to display things nicely. No need. You can do the following from SQL Server Management Studio.\n<\/p>\n
\n1. Turn on the XML showplan
\n — show estimated plan
\n SET SHOWPLAN_XML ON
\n GO\n<\/p>\n
\n — or execute statement and show real plan
\n SET STATISTICS XML ON
\n GO\n<\/p>\n
\n2. This puts out your showplan as an XML data type column. Click the hyperlink to display the file.\n<\/p>\n
\n3. Save the XML showplan file with the magic suffix .SQLPlan\n<\/p>\n
\n4. Now when you double-click on the .SQLPlan file, it opens in SSMS as the interactive showplan with the hover-over stats.\n<\/p>\n
\nCool, eh? You can do a variation of this with SQL Profiler too. In fact its easier with SQL Profiler. Now you can mail the .SQLPlan to a friend. With full fidelity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I've always liked the graphic showplan in SQL Server query analyzer. The biggest hassle with it came when you wanted to send the plan to a friend. Or maybe MS support, but support is your friend too… right? You could send screenshots (which had the annoying habit of never displaying those hover-over stats) or go back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sql-server-2005","category-sql-server-xml"],"yoast_head":"\n