Grant Fritchey

Yes, that's what this book is about - understanding execution plans. It starts with what happens when you execute a query where the author talks about the parser, algebraizer, the optimizer and the 'executor'!

If you're new to understanding the execution plan concepts, I'd suggest you take the first two chapters slowly and thoroughly. I did this and it helped me to read through the plans myself and I only skimmed over the paragraphs to confirm my knowledge.

This book doesn't tell you how to write better queries directly, but by enabling you to understand how the optimizer works, you'll end up writing better queries yourself.

The book does take you down some real advanced topics like cursors and parallelism. I don't think I'll use those tips for the most part of my work, but it was great to know them nevertheless.… (mehr)