Check out my Execution Plan notes for Beginners.
Read em if your a beginner.
Great notes, I will be interested to see what others have to say or if there are any additions. Question, how do you think reading plans change for different versions or even different flavors of the databases (Oracle, DB2, MSSQL). Seems in most cases the plan steps and theories themselves don't change, its just the details for the version.
Thanks!