Does SQL Server Management Studio 2017 Contain a New Explain Feature

TL;DR

I happened upon a feature in SQL Server Management Studio v17.9 which I was not aware of. It looks a bit like the EXPLAIN found in Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL. Where is this feature documented?

How to Turn The Feature On

I was running the following query with the options Include Actual Execution Plan (Ctrl + M) and Include Live Query Statistics turned on:

SELECT sdes.session_id
,sdes.[status]
,sdes.login_name
,sdes.[host_name]
,sder.blocking_session_id
,sdb.name
,sdes.cpu_time
,sdes.logical_reads --optionally: + sdes.reads + sdes.writes
,sdes.last_request_start_time
,sdes.program_name
,sdes.session_id
,sder.request_id
,dest.[text]
FROM sys.dm_exec_sessions AS sdes
LEFT JOIN sys.dm_exec_connections AS sdec
ON sdes.session_id = sdec.session_id
JOIN sys.databases AS sdb
ON sdes.database_id = sdb.database_id
LEFT JOIN sys.dm_exec_requests AS sder
ON sdes.session_id = sder.session_id
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(sdec.most_recent_sql_handle) AS dest
WHERE 1=1
AND sdb.name = ''

Outcome

This produced four results tabs:

• Results

• Messages

• Live Query Statistics

• Execution Plan

Special Results Tab

When I switched to the Results tab, I noticed a result set just below the actual results which looks like this:

Observations

If I turn on either the Include Actual Execution Plan (Ctrl + M) option or the Include Live Query Statistics option, then the SQL Server Explain isn't displayed. The "SQL Server Explain" is only displayed if both options are turned on.

Questions

• Can this feature be turned on without having to activate both Include Actual Execution Plan (Ctrl + M) option and the Include Live Query Statistics?

• Where is this neat little feature documented?

Prerequisites

The follo

No, not a feature - it's turning one of these on:

SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON;  
SET STATISTICS PROFILE ON;

The SHOWPLAN_TEXT option and STATISTICS PROFILE option are well-documented and have been around for over a decade, but I don't know when SSMS started turning it on for the combo of live query plans and actual plans. I would consider it a bug.

Here's the SSMS bug I filed for it.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#223647, answer score: 6