Introduction to Plan Guides

Ever needed to slightly change the behavior of a query in a third party app, or maybe to adjust the plan of a stored procedure without changing code? Plan guides let you set up situation where it if a query matches a template we can add or remove OPTION hints from the query, or even specify a different plan entirely. It's not perfect, but it's an interesting approach that can get you out a jam. It can also cause a headache if you are troubleshooting and don't realize a plan guide is altering the plan you're working on.

Andy Warren is a software trainer focusing on SQL Server, a member of the PASS Board of Directors, and a principal in this site - SQLShare.com.

Don Weigend on 7/27/2010

I have no experience with plan guides so this was a excellent introduction to this feature.

Matt Karp on 7/27/2010

Did not know that even existed.

stan on 7/28/2010

Good feature for a DBA. This SP can help with overriding low performing application code. Thanks for the tutorial.

James Slebodnick on 7/28/2010

great topic -thx

4B47653576 on 9/1/2010

Very good. I'd like to see a plan guide for multiline sql statement and how to manage the white space in that scenario.

Sarabpreet Singh on 9/9/2010

Gud one. ;)

vijay on 11/10/2010

Good

Marten on 8/23/2012

Short and consciece. Good in my opinion!