XML datatype instance has too many levels of nested nodes. Maximum allowed depth is 128 levels. Gah!

Yeah, that’s pretty annoying! You’re in a rush to troubleshoot the performance of a stored proc that’s gone rogue, and the tool you are using (something like the SQL statement pictured above) is crashing with this XML error with sys.dm_exec_text_query_plan. You don’t have time to fix the tool properly, so you hack it apart and finally get the query plan text displayed graphically, address the issue and hastily move on to the next burning issue.

How I Present SQL Code in WordPress

I really should get more practice writing blog posts to give me a chance of remembering the torturous process of inserting quite nicely formatted SQL code. I say “quite nicely” because I’ve seen it done better elsewhere, but then again I’ve also seem much worse.