To meet the need to analyze a query execution plan while the query is executing, Live Query Statistics (LQS) was introduced with the SQL Server 2016 release of SSMS, adding rich visuals by animating the in-flight execution plan to allow more immediate and precise identification of hot spots in a plan during query execution.
To see LQS in action, open a new query window in SSMS, in which we can use the following example query from Chapter 3, Mechanics of the Query Optimizer. This is a previously identified long-running query that I'm tasked to troubleshoot and tune:
SELECT e.[BusinessEntityID], p.[Title], p.[FirstName],p.[MiddleName],
p.[LastName], p.[Suffix], e.[JobTitle],
pp.[PhoneNumber], pnt.[Name] AS [PhoneNumberType],
ea.[EmailAddress], p.[EmailPromotion], a.[AddressLine1],
a.[AddressLine2], a.[City], sp.[Name] AS ...
