erikdarlingdata

Analyze a SQL Server execution plan (.sqlplan / showplan XML) and explain what is actually slow and why. Use whenever a user shares a query plan, asks why a query is slow, asks what an operator means, asks whether an index would help, or asks you to interpret estimated vs actual rows, spills, memory grants, or parallelism. Prevents the standard wrong conclusions - reading cost percentages as measurements, calling scans bad, or pasting missing-index DDL verbatim.