Every day, out in the various discussion boards devoted to Microsoft SQL Server, the same types of questions come up again and again: Why is this query running slow? Is my index getting used? Why does this query run faster than this query? My response is the same n in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? Execution plans provide a wealth of information on how your queries are being executed by SQL Server, and are a vitally important tool for anyone who writes TSQL to access data in a SQL Server database. My goal with this book was to gather as much useful information on execution plans as possible into a single location, and to organize it in such as way that it provided a clear route through the subject. Written and tested for SQL Server 2005, I guide you right from the basics of capturing plans, through their interpretation, and then on to how to use them to understand how you might optimize your SQL queries, improve your indexing strategy, spot some common performance issues, and more.