Being in a shop that utilizes Plan Explorer it was awesome to hear of the news release from SQL Sentry on upcoming changes around their product.

In case you missed this news you can check out Greg Gonzalez’s (B|T) post at http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/greggonzalez/plan-explorer-pro-goes-free/

So, what does this mean for you, the readers and community members?

• All features are completely FREE
• There is one SKU now
• Registration is still not required ( I’ll give you an added hint here; if you register there are some other benefits, so why not?)
• You ready for this one – – two powerful features have been included in Plan Explorer 3.0:
  • Index Analysis
  • Performance Profiling

Now, for an added benefit SQL Sentry’s very own Aaron Bertrand (B|T) will be hosting a webinar on Friday, September 9th at 11:00 a.m. EDT. You can register for this webinar at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6543832890155002369

Why Plan Explorer?

I can tell you from personal experience that having Plan Explorer in your tool belt gives the data professional some added fire power on a daily basis. For a full listing of these features check out http://www.sqlsentry.com/products/plan-explorer/sql-server-query-view and see for yourself what you are missing.

My Favorite Features

One of my favorite features is the SSMS add-in; however there are several more features that might tickle your fancy such as:

• History and comments – did I just hear some cheers? As you go through tuning and optimizing these queries you can keep notes and comments along the way.
• Statistics Analysis with Histograms
• Expressions
• Tree Statements
• Query Columns
• Table/IO

Conclusion

SQL Sentry has hit a home run with this new release. The product continues to build out nicely; the team there gets a “job well done” in my book