A small but nice little feature I have been using recently can be found within Query Store.

Let’s say you have 2 Plan IDs for a query, naturally you want to view the execution plan for the different plans. In the past I did it a manual way, by that I mean by individually clicking on the Plan ID to see the plan then moving on to the next one.

It is much easier to explain with some images.

The Y axis is actually Duration (m/s) so Plan ID 2 is as follows:

Plan 1 is as follows:

While this is a trivial example it would be nice to have a side by side view of the plans. Well you can!

In the top menu bar you will need to click on the button highlighted below via the red arrow.

Well OK, it would help to select the plans that are of interest.

Once you “Shift + click” you will have the comparison window. First for the actual plans and also for a specific operator that you are interested in.

Nice to see a classic hash vs nested loop join, below shows the SELECT operator differences.

If you want to compare a different area within the execution plan (like the JOIN) you can by simply clicking on the operator, below shows both the hash and nested loop join being highlighted.

Scroll across your screen to dig into the details.

Like I said, not a complicated blog post but I feel it is quite handy to know about!