SQL Server Execution Plans - Red Gate Software

Chapter 1: Execution Plan Basics
I tend to click the icon more often than not but, either way, we see our very first
estimated execution plan, as in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1
Visually, there's no easy way to tell the difference between an estimated plan and an
actual plan. The differences are in the underlying data, which we'll be covering in some
detail throughout the book.
We'll explain what this plan represents shortly, but first, let's capture the actual
execution plan.
Getting the actual plan
Actual execution plans, unlike estimated execution plans, do not represent the calculations
of the optimizer. Instead, this execution plan shows exactly how SQL Server
executed the query. The two will often be identical but will sometimes differ, due to
changes to the execution plan made by the storage engine, as we discussed earlier in
the chapter.
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