Query Cost

[Gixonita]

Hi All,

In QA if you choose the very first item of the Execution plan you get something of the sort:

SELECT
Retreives......blah blah

Physical Operation : Select
Logical Operation : Select
Row count : 2
Number of executes : 1
Subtree cost : 0.0527
Estimated row count : 4

Argument:
Blah blah

My question is if the SUBTREE COST is the total cost of the query and the one that I would be interested in reducing to optimize times.

I wrote the same query a little different than how it was given to me and the SUBTREE COST was reduced to 0.0465. Are this numbers reliable or should I use the profiler (or any other suggestions).

Thanks