Performance Tuning with SQL Server Dynamic Management Views

Chapter 3: Query Plan Metadata
In SQL Server 2005 Management Studio, you can click on the link to the query plan,
thus opening it up as an XML document in SSMS, and then save it with a .SQLPLAN
extension (by default it will be saved with an XML extension). You can open it up in SSMS
and view the graphical plan. SQL Server 2008 Management Studio realizes the schema is
a SQL plan, and so allows us to simply click the XML output to get a display that shows
the graphical version of the plan, as shown in Figure 3.1 (cropped to save space).
Figure 3.1: Viewing the query plan in Management Studio.
In this way, we can find out precisely how a stored procedure was executed at the time of
being cached.
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