This article explains how Datadog's Database Monitoring now supports automatic collection of PostgreSQL's EXPLAIN ANALYZE plans. It helps users identify performance issues in queries by correlating execution details with application performance monitoring (APM) data. The tool also visualizes data to simplify the analysis of slow queries.

SQL query optimization involves the DBMS determining the most efficient plan to execute a query, with the query optimizer responsible for evaluating different execution plans based on cost. The Plan Explorer tool, implemented for PostgreSQL, visualizes these plans and provides insights into the optimizer's decisions by generating various diagrams. The tool can operate in both standalone and server modes, enabling deeper analysis of query execution and costs.