SQL Server: Using SentryOne Plan Explorer
Course info
Course info
Description
Query plan analysis is both a science and an art, and the best tool for the job is SentryOne Plan Explorer. In this course, SQL Server: Using SentryOne Plan Explorer, you will learn how to make the most of the tool to make query plan analysis and performance tuning much easier and more intuitive than using SQL Server Management Studio. First, you will gain an understanding of how Plan Explorer compares to Management Studio, demonstrating how Plan Explorer solves the problems and shortcomings that Management Studio has. Next, you will discover how to use the the Plan Explorer user interface, including how the various information displays can help with performance analysis and tuning, and the various methods for getting query plans into the tool. Finally, you will explore how to use the more advanced features of the tool like index and statistics analysis, and profiling query performance using live query statistics. When you are finished with this course, you will have the skills and knowledge to start using the powerful SentryOne Plan Explorer tool to greatly improve your query plan analysis and performance tuning capabilities.
About the author
Jonathan Kehayias is a Principal Consultant with SQLskills. He is the youngest person ever to achieve the Microsoft Certified Master - SQL Server 2008 certification and has been a SQL Server MVP for many years.
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Section Introduction Transcripts
Course Overview
Hello. My name is Jonathan Kehayias, and welcome to my course, SQL Server: Using SentryOne Plan Explorer. I'm a SQL Server consultant with SQLskills.com, and I've been working with SQL Server since version 6.5. I've been fortunate enough to work in various industries as both the SQL Server developer and a database administrator prior to becoming a consultant and enjoy sharing my knowledge around the world at different conferences, events, in-person training courses, and online through Twitter and various forums. As a part of my work, I've often had to review execution plans for SQL queries to identify potential performance issues and optimizations to queries and database schemas, and one of the tools that I've used daily over the last 8 years for this has been SentryOne Plan Explorer. This course will begin with an introduction to what SentryOne Plan Explorer is and why you might use it over SQL Server Management Studio. Then we'll look at how to collect execution plans from SQL Server and some of the differences and estimated in actual execution plans, how to use plan explorer to capture statistics profile information and store multiple execution in a Plan Explorer session format, and we'll compare the plan layout options and differences between Management Studio and Plan Explorer and focus specifically on the features of Plan Explorer that assist with rapid identification of performance issues. This course will demonstrate all of the new features in SentryOne Plan Explorer to include the index analysis and statistics histogram layout, the live performance statistic playback, and deadlock playback features. There will be demos along the way to show you how to become more efficient at execution plan analysis and where to find information fast. You can also download SentryOne Plan Explorer and follow along using your own execution plans to maybe find an interesting new nugget or two. I hope you'll join me as we explore SentryOne Plan Explorer in this course.