Types of execution plans
There are three types of execution plans:
| Estimated | The plan as compiled by the query optimizer. This execution plan is stored in the plan cache. |
| Actual | The actual execution plan adds an execution plan context to an estimated execution plan. The data of an actual execution plan becomes available after the execution of an SQL statement has finished and then allows to compare the query optimizer's estimations with the actual run-time figures. |
| Live Query Statistics | The live query statistics execution plan is available for in-flight query executions and is similar to the actual execution plan, but allows to query the actual figures while the SQL statement is executing because the run-time information is updated every second. |