SQL Server Execution Plans - Red Gate Software

Chapter 7: Special Datatypes and Execution Plans
ON p.BusinessEntityID = e.BusinessEntityID
INNER JOIN Person.BusinessEntityAddress AS bea
ON e.BusinessEntityID = bea.BusinessEntityID
INNER JOIN Person.Address a
ON bea.AddressID = a.AddressID
FOR XML AUTO;
Listing 7.1
This generates the actual execution plan shown in Figure 7.1.
Figure 7.1
The difference between this execution plan and that for any "normal" query may be
hard to spot. It's at the very beginning of the logical processing order. Instead of a
T-SQL Select operation, we see an XML Select operation. That is the only change.
Otherwise, it's simply a query.
To see all the various methods at work, instead of the slightly complicated example above,
consider the second, somewhat simpler, query in Listing 7.2. We'll compare the output of
this query using the various FOR XML modes, starting over again with AUTO mode.
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