---
title: Tutorial: Monitor Query Performance with SQL Operations Studio | Microsoft Docs
description: This tutorial demonstrates how to monitor a database by adding a pre-built query performance widget to the database dashboard that shows the five slowest queries.
keywords:
ms.custom: "tools|sos"
ms.date: "11/08/2017"
ms.prod: "sql-non-specified"
ms.reviewer: "alayu; erickang; sstein"
ms.suite: "sql"
ms.tgt_pltfrm: ""
ms.topic: "tutorial"
author: "erickangMSFT"
ms.author: "erickang"
manager: craigg
ms.workload: "Inactive"
---
This tutorial demonstrates the process of adding one of [!INCLUDEname-sos]'s built-in insight widgets to the database dashboard. to quickly view a database's five slowest queries using Query Store. You also learn how to view the details of the slow queries and query plans using [!INCLUDEname-sos]'s features. During this tutorial, you learn how to:
[!div class="checklist"]
- Enable Query Store on a database
- Add a pre-built insight widget to the database dashboard
- View details about the database's slowest queries
- View query execution plans for the slow queries
This tutorial details the process of adding [!INCLUDEname-sos]'s built-in insight widgets to the database management dashboard.
[!INCLUDEname-sos] includes several insight widgets out-of-the-box. This tutorial shows how to add the query-data-store-db-insight widget, but the steps are basically the same for adding any widget.
This tutorial requires the TutorialDB database. To create the TutorialDB database, complete one of the following quickstarts:
- [Connect and query SQL Server using [!INCLUDEname-sos-short]](quickstart-sql-server.md)
- [Connect and query Azure SQL Database using [!INCLUDEname-sos-short]](quickstart-sql-database.md)
- [Connect and query SQL Data Warehouse using [!INCLUDEname-sos-short]](quickstart-sql-dw.md)
The widget in this example requires Query Store to be enabled so run the following T-SQL statement against your database:
ALTER DATABASE TutorialDB SET QUERY_STORE = ONTo add an insight widget to your dashboard, edit the dashboard.database.widgets setting in your User Settings file.
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Open User Settings by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P to open the Command Palette.
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Type settings in the search box and from the available settings files, select Preferences: Open User Settings.
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Type dashboard in the settings search box and locate the dashboard.database.widgets.
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To customize the dashboard.database.widgets setting, hover over the pencil icon to the left of the dashboard.database.widgets text, click Edit > Copy to Settings.
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Using [!INCLUDEname-sos]'s insight settings IntelliSense, configure name for the widget title, gridItemConfig for the widget size, and widget by selecting query-data-store-database-insight from the list as shown in the following screenshot:
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Press CTRL + s to save the modified User Settings.
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Open the Database dashboard by navigating to TutorialDB in the Servers sidebar, right-click, and select Manage.
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The insight widget appears on the dashboard:
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To view additional information for an insight widget, click the ellipses (...) in the upper right, and select Show Details:
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To show more details for an item, select any item in Chart Data list.
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Right-click query_sql_txt in Item Details and click Copy Cell.
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Close the Insights pane.
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Open a new query editor by pressing Ctrl + N.
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Paste the query_sql_txt from the previous steps into the editor.
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Click Explain.
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View the query's execution plan:
??THIS OPENS AS TEXT FOR ME??
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Open the insight detail dialog again.
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Right-click query_plan value and select Copy Cell
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Press Ctrl-N to open a new editor.
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Paste the copied plan into the editor.
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Press Ctrl-S to save the file, and change the file extension to *.showplan.
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The query plan opens in [!INCLUDEname-sos]'s query plan viewer.
TBD - screenshot
In this tutorial, you learned how to:
[!div class="checklist"]
- Enable Query Store on a database
- Add an insight widget to the database dashboard
- View details about the database's slowest queries
- View query execution plans for the slow queries
To learn how to build a custom insight widget, see [Build a custom insight widget]](tutorial-build-custom-insight-sql-server.md).








