I’ve seen the question a few times now: “How do I compare two plans side-by-side in Plan Explorer?” Management Studio allows you to view multiple graphical plans that are visible simultaneously, either by generating plans for every statement in a batch, or by generating plans in separate query windows and then splitting the panes. However, at ...

Where is my graphical ShowPlan? Many of you on SQL Server 2008 R2 are experiencing a major annoyance with SSMS since installing service pack 1 - when clicking a plan from grid results, you get raw XML instead of the graphical plan. I wrote about this symptom and a workaround in a previous post. In the original Connect item, they state that it ...

For those of you using the SQL Server 2008 R2 version of Management Studio, and have applied Service Pack 1, you have probably noticed that clicking on a ShowPlan in grid results no longer shows the graphical plan, but rather opens a new window with the raw XML. For example, running the following query: SELECT TOP (5) ...