What does the SAP HANA EXPLAIN PLAN statement do, and where does it store its result?

What is the SAP HANA SQL plan cache, and what happens when a statement is executed?

In which direction should you read an SAP HANA execution plan, and which columns reconstruct the operation sequence?

What information appears on the Overview tab of an SAP HANA PlanViz visualized plan?

How can you restrict the SAP HANA expensive-statements trace, and what wildcard/exclusion syntax applies?

Which SAP HANA metadata views expose optimizer statistics, and what is special about querying M_SYSTEM_DATA_STATISTICS?

In SAP HANA, why is 'execution plan' the preferred term over 'explain plan' or 'query plan'?