SQL Server Query Analyzer

SQL Server Query Analyzer is an excellent tool for the ad hoc, interactive execution of Transact-SQL statements and scripts. Because users must understand Transact-SQL in order to use SQL Server Query Analyzer, this tool is primarily meant for database administrators and power users. Users can enter Transact-SQL statements in a full-text window, execute the statements, and view the results in a text window or tabular output. Users also can open a text file containing Transact-SQL statements, execute the statements, and view the results in the results window.

SQL Server Query Analyzer provides excellent tools for determining how SQL Server is interpreting and working with a Transact-SQL statement. A user can:

• Display a graphical representation of the execution plan generated for the statement.
• Start the Index Tuning Wizard to determine what indexes can be defined for the underlying tables to optimize the performance of the statement.
• Display statistics about the performance of the statement.

SQL Server Query Analyzer shows how complex queries are resolved. In this illustration, portions of a query are parallelized for performance improvement.