AWS – CloudWatch provides execution plan capture for Aurora PostgreSQL

Amazon CloudWatch Database Insights now collects the query execution plans of top SQL queries running on Aurora PostgreSQL instances, and stores them over time. This feature helps you identify if a change in the query execution plan is the cause of performance degradation or a stalled query. Execution plan capture for Aurora PostgreSQL is available exclusively in the Advanced mode of CloudWatch Database Insights.

A query execution plan is a sequence of steps that database engines use to retrieve or modify data in a relational database management system (RDBMS). The RDBMS query optimizers may not always choose the most optimal execution plan from a set of alternative ways to execute a given query. Hence, database users sometimes need to manually examine and tune the plans to improve performance. This feature allows you to visualize multiple plans of a SQL query and compare them. It can help you determine if a change in performance of a SQL query is due to a different query execution plan within minutes.

You can get started with this feature by enabling Database Insights Advanced mode on your Aurora PostgreSQL clusters using the RDS service console, AWS APIs, or the AWS SDK. CloudWatch Database Insights delivers database health monitoring aggregated at the fleet level, as well as instance-level dashboards for detailed database and SQL query analysis.

CloudWatch Database Insights is available in all public AWS Regions and offers vCPU-based pricing – see the pricing page for details. For further information, visit the Database Insights documentation.

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