Visual Query Plans in Studio

Sep 16, 2019, 2 minute read
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We built a visual query plan interface to help you write better queries.

For a primer on query plans, please review How to Read Stardog Query Plans.

To learn more about writing fast queries, please review 7 Steps To Fast SPARQL Queries.

Background

Queries often grow as they are refined, leaving the authors deeply familiar with their logic. However the query plan is growing in parallel, largely out of sight.

Understanding how queries are executed is crucial to making them fast, but a wall of text can be hard to decipher.

With Studio 1.9+ you can see your query plan rendered visually as a tree, offering term definitions on hover and enabling you to collapse irrelevant subtrees to focus on the parts that need your attention.

Tips and Tricks

  • Hover on the query plan operator to see a description.

  • Click the icon in the bottom-right to toggle full-screen mode.

  • Nodes highlighted in red are pipeline breakers, which often cause performance issues.

  • Interact without fear. Clicking on nodes to expand/collapse does not affect the layout and nodes remember their visibility state; if you hide C’s subtree, then click C’s parent B to hide C, and finally click B again, C becomes visible while its subtree remains hidden.

What’s Next?

We are committed to helping our users write better queries. If you have any suggestions or feedback please comment here.

As always we love helping users with slow queries. Please use the Save to File button to export the query plan and send it over, along with your obfuscated data to reproduce the issue, and we promise to take a look.

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