You get an email from a developer, asking to evaluate an execution plan. When you receive it, it looks like this:

I’m not knocking the xml. In fact, I use it pretty frequently to get at things that aren’t immediately obvious from normal graphical execution plans (i.e., implicit conversions). But the graphical execution plans can make things so easy. And converting it is the easiest thing in the world. Simply save the file with an .sqlplan extension.
Et voila….

For deadlocks, save the xml as an .xdl file:
