Friday, May 27, 2011

A Graphical Plan Reading List

Question: I've used Database Tracing In 50 Easy Steps to get a graphical plan with statistics, now what do I do?

How do I use the information in the graphical plan to make my SQL go faster?

Answer: Ha! ...when you find that out let me know, will you?

Seriously, unless you're a member of the iAnywhere Solutions Engineering team who wrote the query optimizer, the question becomes "what looks wrong?

For example, thick red lines are one thing that looks wrong, boxes outlined in red are another, and estimates that are vastly different from actual results are yet another.

Then, the question becomes, "what can I do about the things that look wrong?"

Answers to both questions appear sprinkled throughout the graphical plan documentation in the Help; here's a Reading List for SQL Anwyhere 11.0.1:

The material hasn't changed for 12.0.1; here's that list:

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