Question

Which of the following syntax is valid?

(a) SET SHOWPLAN_XML { ON | OFF }

(b) SET SHOWPLAN { ON | OFF }

(c) SET SHOW_XML { ON | OFF }

(d) None of the mentioned

I got this question in unit test.

This intriguing question comes from Query Execution Plan in section Performance Tuning and Optimization of SQL Server

Answer 1

Right answer is (a) SET SHOWPLAN_XML { ON | OFF }

To elaborate: SET SHOWPLAN_XML causes SQL Server not to execute Transact-SQL statements.