Paul White puts up an article:
I showed a hidden option to make all operators report only their individual times in
More Consistent Execution Plan Timings in SQL Server 2022
. That feature isn’t complete yet, so the results aren’t perfect, and it’s not documented or supported.
I mention all that in case you are interested in the background. None of the foregoing explains what we see in this mixed mode plan. The row mode Gather Streams elapsed time ought to include its children. The batch mode Sort should just be reporting its own elapsed time.
With that understanding in mind, there’s no way the Sort could run for longer than the Gather Streams. What’s going on here?
Read on for a Paul White-level discussion of the topic, including a demo from Erik Darling.