Early adopters: if you’re rolling on SQL Server 2016 SP1, you may have noticed that when you click on query plans in sp_BlitzCache or sp_WhoIsActive, they sometimes render as ugly XML rather than the beautiful graphical showplan.
Here’s a 3-minute video showing the bug:
To work around it, save the XML plan as a file but you’ll need to frame the name in double quotes, like “my beautiful query.sqlplan” and end it with a sqlplan extension. Then, open it up again, and SSMS renders it as a graphical plan.
To get this fixed, vote up these 3 Connect items:
SSMS 2016 problem showing execution plans when querying SQL 2016 SP1 SQL 2016 SP1 showplanxml.xsd doesn’t include new execution plan attributes SSMS 2016 “Open recent” menu doesn’t show recently saved files