SQL Development
InterSystems SQL now offers a machine-readable format for query plans. Using this new option, the $SYSTEM.SQL.Explain() method will now produce a JSON-based rendering of the query plan with significantly more detail on the plan itself as well as the tables and indices it accesses. Where the previous XML-based format used simple English phrases to describe different steps, the new format is easier to consume for tools that wish to perform more thorough analysis or graphical rendering of query plans.
This release introduces an opt-in capability to sample runtime parameters for SQL statements. The Statement Index already records a rich set of metadata such as detailed runtime statistics and query plans for each statement, which typically has any literals substituted for placeholders that parameterize the cached query code. Now, the statement index can be extended with a sampling of the actual runtime values for those parameters. These can then be combined with the normalized statement text to, for example, build a representative workload that can be run against another deployment, for example to benchmark a new hardware environment or experiment with a different set of indices for the schema.
InterSystems SQL now supports CREATE SCHEMA and DROP SCHEMA commands to include in scripts for setting up and tearing down your application environment.
