I cant see statistics information for my auto-generated stats - is this normal? (SQL2005)

Question

I'm trying to diagnose a slow stored procedure (see this question) and I've noticed that for my auto-generated stats (the ones named things like _WA_Sys_0000000A_0D0FEE32) I cant view the detailed histogram. If I click on the "Details" tab I just get the message:

No statistics information available.

If I click on the details tab for any of the statistics generated for my indexes then I can view the histogram just fine.

What does this mean?

• Is the histogram for auto-generated stats simply not available for viewing in this way?
• If this is the case is there any way to see / validate that these statistics are sensible
• Does this in fact mean that these statistics are not avaialble (as in, also not available to the query analyser)?

Answer 1

Use sp_helpstats and DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS from a query window and you can see the distribution data.

sp_helpstats (Transact-SQL)

DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS (Transact-SQL)