Estimated and Actual Plans Can Have Different Shapes.

Hi Brent, What is your take on Hugo Kornelis’s explanation of execution plan naming. As her his explanation, estimated exec plan is simply an execution plan whereas actual execution plan = execution plan+run-time stats. Do you agree that the naming is flawed and confusing? – Yourbiggestfan

The Plan Cache Plan

How to Find the Estimation Cost for a Query

Discover how to estimate the cost of a query. Read on to see an example of how to extract the Estimated Cost for execution plans stored in the procedure cache.

Execution Plan Types

Query Optimization Level

Missing Indexes

Execution Plans and Data Protection

One of the most important tools for query tuning is ability to view execution plans. They are even portable; you can send an execution plan to get advice from someone who doesn't have access to the underlying data. Have you even considered that sensitive information might travel along with the plans? Hugo Kornelis explains how execution plans affect data protection.

How to Show the Execution Plan of a Running Query

By looking at a query execution plan, you can determine which steps are used to resolve the query. But what if you just want to find out what the query plans are for only the queries that are currently running?

Why sp_prepare Isn’t as “Good” as sp_executesql for Performance

Erik Darling shows how execution plan estimates suffer.

Comparing Execution Plans