When I was putting the finishing touches to the CASE paper, Andy Campbell (one of the reviewers) pointed out that he preferred the DBMS_XPLAN output when looking at execution plans for SQL statements. I do too, but I wanted to use Autotrace, partly for consistency with the original DECODE paper, partly because I don�t like all that EXPLAIN PLAN FOR nonsense. I just want the data, plan and statistics in one easy step (running the statement).
So about two days after I’d put the HTML version together, I got round to reading Tom Kyte’s 10gR2 new features article, which had been in a small collection for me to get through after I’d finished the paper. The very first thing in the article is that 10gR2 sqlplus autotrace displays the new style of execution plan. Marvellous.
So I downloaded release 2, updated my laptop (which was all very smooth and straightforward), reran the examples and nice new execution plans were displayed. Unfortunately they are *much* wider than the traditional style. I know that’s completely obvious and it had never been a problem when using them in the past, but when you’re trying to keep the formatting nice, it doesn’t help.
I’m still thinking about this.
You can avoid all that EXPLAIN PLAN FOR nonsense with a handy script such as xplan.sql 😉
Agreed, but I still prefer autotrace personally. I actually want to see the output of the query, the plan, and some basic stats and get all that without any additional steps once autotrace is on.
It’s definitely personal preference, though.
Cheers
True, though sometimes I just want to preview the execution plan without actually running the query.