Execution Plan Estimated Operator Cost
I've said it over and over again, the costs on operators in execution plans, even in actual execution plans are estimates. You need to understand that when looking at your execution plans. It's vital because you need to be able to distinguish between the truly costly parts of a plan and the less costly parts of a plan. Don't believe me? Take a look at this picture and see if you can spot the discrepancy: Spot it yet? Add up the costs for the operators visible in the part of the plan... Yep 125%. And there's more to the plan that I'm not showing. I think this one must total near 200%. The statistics are up to date and there's no consistency errors in the database. These estimates are just off sometimes.…