Text-Only QEP

In a terminal monitor, a QEP is displayed as a tree, where each node has one or two children:

Only join nodes have two children. Other nodes have a left child only. Information on node types is provided in Types of Nodes in a QEP (see Types of Nodes in a QEP).

The tree is read from bottom to top and from left to right, starting with the child nodes at the bottom, going up to the intermediate child nodes, if any, and finally up to the first parent node:

The bottom up approach in the tree diagram mirrors the flow of data during the execution of a query plan.

Rows are read in the leaf nodes of the query plan, WHERE clauses are applied to reduce the number of rows as soon as possible, with qualified rows being passed up through the remaining nodes of the query plan.

Intermediate plan nodes can sort the data or join it to rows from other tables.

Each successive node performs some refinement on the rows received from below. The final result rows emerge from the top of the plan as requested by the query.

In the SQL Scratchpad window, you can show the tree diagram in one of two modes:

• Preview mode gives you a condensed version of the tree, where you can point to a particular node to see its detailed information.

• Normal mode displays the detailed information as part of the tree diagram.

Note: A query that has been modified to include views, integrities, and/or grants, is more involved. The QEP diagram for an involved query (as shown by set qep) can be very wide. On a printout, the diagram can even wrap so that similar levels in the tree appear on different levels. You can find it easier to read such a QEP if you cut and paste the diagram into the correct levels.

SET QEP CONCISE displays the QEP in a format suitable for parsing by a program. The format is as follows:

<Query Plan No and timeout details>| {top node [{left child [{left child…}][{right child…}]};

The following example shows a QEP displayed in tree format and concise format.

QUERY PLAN 1,1, no timeout, of main query | {Hash Join(reltid, reltidx) Heap Pages 1 Tups 91 D20 C41 {Proj-rest Heap Pages 1 Tups 177 D2 C2 {iirelation (r) cHashed(NU) Pages 18 Tups 177 }}{Proj-rest Heap Pages 9 Tups 1817 D18 C18 {iiattribute (a) cHashed(NU) Pages 132 Tups 1817 }}};