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SolarWinds Enhances Plan Explorer

SolarWinds announced enhancements to Plan Explorer®, its tool for analyzing query performance in Microsoft® SQL Server® environments.

This free product helps database professionals analyze query execution plans to improve database performance and drive better technical efficiency in their data ecosystems.

The Plan Explorer tool helps database teams find the root of query problems in Microsoft SQL Server. Plan Explorer provides insights by graphically delivering query execution plans in helpful plan comparisons, as well as color and layout options for diagrams. It also has a number of performance-tuning capabilities:

- Runtime metrics unavailable in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

- Index scoring and histogram analysis

- Live query profile with resource charts

- Wait statistics with links to the SQLskills wait type library

- Full query call stack for dynamic SQL and iterative queries

- Session history, versioning, and comments

- Unique analysis and visualization of deadlocks

Plan Explorer is also natively built into the SolarWinds SQL Sentry® product. By combining the Plan Explorer tool's detailed query plan analysis with the comprehensive monitoring and diagnostics of SQL Sentry, database administrators and developers can achieve a more effective approach to managing SQL Server performance. This dual approach helps ensure immediate query performance improvement and long-term SQL Server performance, stability, and efficiency.

The powerful new SolarWinds® Plan Explorer upgrades enable teams to optimize query performance and resolve deadlocks more swiftly and efficiently and include:

- Compatibility with SQL Server 2022: Plan Explorer has expanded its performance analysis capabilities to fully support SQL Server 2022. With this support, Plan Explorer maintains its high standard of performance analysis, helping ensure users can maximize the benefits of the latest SQL Server features.

- Enhanced visibility with plan guide indication: Plan Explorer now provides insights into query execution. The feature demystifies the often complex execution plans, making it easier to identify potential performance bottlenecks and apply targeted optimizations.

- Streamlined deadlock investigation: Users can now dissect deadlock events, understand their root causes, and implement corrective measures more efficiently.

- Revamped start page: The start page of Plan Explorer has been redesigned to offer a more intuitive user experience and encourage community engagement with easy access to documentation, industry events, and information about other SolarWinds solutions.

SolarWinds has continued to innovate its powerful database management solutions to provide customers with amplified visibility, more seamless integrations, and the ability to redefine the capabilities of the database environment as it becomes increasingly complicated. The company recently announced major enhancements to its comprehensive database performance monitoring and DataOps solution, SQL Sentry. These include introducing query-level wait statistics and a revamped Environmental Health Overview dashboard that enables organizations to identify and prevent database performance issues.

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SolarWinds Enhances Plan Explorer

SolarWinds announced enhancements to Plan Explorer®, its tool for analyzing query performance in Microsoft® SQL Server® environments.

This free product helps database professionals analyze query execution plans to improve database performance and drive better technical efficiency in their data ecosystems.

The Plan Explorer tool helps database teams find the root of query problems in Microsoft SQL Server. Plan Explorer provides insights by graphically delivering query execution plans in helpful plan comparisons, as well as color and layout options for diagrams. It also has a number of performance-tuning capabilities:

- Runtime metrics unavailable in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

- Index scoring and histogram analysis

- Live query profile with resource charts

- Wait statistics with links to the SQLskills wait type library

- Full query call stack for dynamic SQL and iterative queries

- Session history, versioning, and comments

- Unique analysis and visualization of deadlocks

Plan Explorer is also natively built into the SolarWinds SQL Sentry® product. By combining the Plan Explorer tool's detailed query plan analysis with the comprehensive monitoring and diagnostics of SQL Sentry, database administrators and developers can achieve a more effective approach to managing SQL Server performance. This dual approach helps ensure immediate query performance improvement and long-term SQL Server performance, stability, and efficiency.

The powerful new SolarWinds® Plan Explorer upgrades enable teams to optimize query performance and resolve deadlocks more swiftly and efficiently and include:

- Compatibility with SQL Server 2022: Plan Explorer has expanded its performance analysis capabilities to fully support SQL Server 2022. With this support, Plan Explorer maintains its high standard of performance analysis, helping ensure users can maximize the benefits of the latest SQL Server features.

- Enhanced visibility with plan guide indication: Plan Explorer now provides insights into query execution. The feature demystifies the often complex execution plans, making it easier to identify potential performance bottlenecks and apply targeted optimizations.

- Streamlined deadlock investigation: Users can now dissect deadlock events, understand their root causes, and implement corrective measures more efficiently.

- Revamped start page: The start page of Plan Explorer has been redesigned to offer a more intuitive user experience and encourage community engagement with easy access to documentation, industry events, and information about other SolarWinds solutions.

SolarWinds has continued to innovate its powerful database management solutions to provide customers with amplified visibility, more seamless integrations, and the ability to redefine the capabilities of the database environment as it becomes increasingly complicated. The company recently announced major enhancements to its comprehensive database performance monitoring and DataOps solution, SQL Sentry. These include introducing query-level wait statistics and a revamped Environmental Health Overview dashboard that enables organizations to identify and prevent database performance issues.

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AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...