SQL Server variable Table or index causing performance issues - sql-server

I am trying to build a stored procedure that retrieve information from few tables in my databases. I often use variable table to hold data since I have to return it in a result set and also reuse it in following queries instead of requiring the table multiple times.
Is this a good and common way to do that ?
So I started having performance issues when testing the stored procedure. By the way is there an efficient way to test is without having to change the parameter each times ? If I don't change parameter values the query will take only a few milliseconds to run I assume it use some sort of cache.
So I was starting having performance issues when the day before everything was working well so I reworked my queries looked that all index was being used correctly etc. Then I tried switching variable table for temp table just for testing purpose and bingo the 2 or 3 next tests ran like a charm and then performance issues started to appear again. So I am a bit clueless on what happens here and why it happen.
I am running my tests on the production db since it doesn't update or insert anything. There is a piece of code to give you an idea of my test case
--Stuff going on to get values in a temps table for the next query
DECLARE #ApplicationIDs TABLE(ID INT)
-- This table have over 110 000 000 rows and this query use one of its indexes. The query insert between 1 and 10-20k rows
INSERT INTO #ApplicationIDs(ID)
SELECT ApplicationID
FROM Schema.Application
WHERE Columna = value
AND Columnb = value
AND Columnc = value
-- I request the table again but joined with other tables to have my final resultset no performance issues here. ApplicationID is the clustered primary key
SELECT Columns
FROM Schema.Application
INNER JOIN SomeTable ON Columna = Columnb
WHERE ApplicationID IN (SELECT ID FROM #ApplicationIDs)
--There is where it starts happening this table has around 200 000 000 rows and about 50 columns and yes the applicationid column is indexed (nonclustered). I use this index that way in few other context and it work well just not this one
SELECT Columns
FROM Schema.SubApplication
WHERE ApplicationID IN (SELECT ID FROM #ApplicationIDs)
The server is in a VM with 64 gb of ram and SQL have 56GB allocated.
Let me know if you need further details.

Related

SQL query runs into a timeout on a sparse dataset

For sync purposes, I am trying to get a subset of the existing objects in a table.
The table has two fields, [Group] and Member, which are both stringified Guids.
All rows together may be to large to fit into a datatable; I already encountered an OutOfMemory exception. But I have to check that everything I need right now is in the datatable. So I take the Guids I want to check (they come in chunks of 1000), and query only for the related objects.
So, instead of filling my datatable once with all
SELECT * FROM Group_Membership
I am running the following SQL query against my SQL database to get related objects for one thousand Guids at a time:
SELECT *
FROM Group_Membership
WHERE
[Group] IN (#Guid0, #Guid1, #Guid2, #Guid3, #Guid4, #Guid5, ..., #Guid999)
The table in question now contains a total of 142 entries, and the query already times out (CommandTimeout = 30 seconds). On other tables, which are not as sparsely populated, similar queries don't time out.
Could someone shed some light on the logic of SQL Server and whether/how I could hint it into the right direction?
I already tried to add a nonclustered index on the column Group, but it didn't help.
I'm not sure that WHERE IN will be able to maximally use an index on [Group], or if at all. However, if you had a second table containing the GUID values, and furthermore if that column had an index, then a join might perform very fast.
Create a temporary table for the GUIDs and populate it:
CREATE TABLE #Guids (
Guid varchar(255)
)
INSERT INTO #Guids (Guid)
VALUES
(#Guid0, #Guid1, #Guid2, #Guid3, #Guid4, ...)
CREATE INDEX Idx_Guid ON #Guids (Guid);
Now try rephrasing your current query using a join instead of a WHERE IN (...):
SELECT *
FROM Group_Membership t1
INNER JOIN #Guids t2
ON t1.[Group] = t2.Guid;
As a disclaimer, if this doesn't improve the performance, it could be because your table has low cardinality. In such a case, an index might not be very effective.

Tuning Select statement to obtain faster results

I have benefited from this website for a long time now. This is my first question on the site. It is regarding performance tuning a reporting query. Here it goes.
1.
SELECT Count(b1.primkey)
from tableA b1 --WITH (NOLOCK)
join tableA b2 --WITH (NOLOCK)
on b1.email = b2.email
and DateDiff(day, b2.BookedDate , b1.BookedDate) > 1
tableA has around 7 million rows. Email is a varchar(100) field. Bookeddate is a datetime field. primkey is a primary key column that is an int.
My purpose of writing this query is to find out the count entries that have same email ids but have come in one day late. This query take about 45 minutes to run. I really want to reduce the time it takes to execute.
Since this is for reporting, i tried in vain to use --WITH (NOLOCK) option to improve the read time. I have a column store index on tableA and I know that it is being used by the SQL optimizer - can see in the execution plan. I am using SQL Server 2012.
Can someone tell me in such a case, what would be better? Using a nonclustered index on email or a nonclustered columnstore index on tableA?
Please help me.
Your query is relatively complex. You are essentially joining two tables that have 7 million records each on a column that is not unique.
How about the following query instead:
select Email
from TableA
group by Email
having MAX(BookedDate) > MIN(BookedDate) + 1
Also make sure you have an index with Email and BookedDate.
Hope this helps.
You have 3 options here:
Create clustered index on email field at least for a larger table.
But I suppose there are other queries running on these tables, and
clustered index is needed on other fields
Move emails to another table, and store email id's in TableA and
TableB; join on int field would be much faster than on varchar
fields
Create indexes on email fields with included columns BookedDate (no
need to include primkey, you can count on another field, or count(*). Code: create index idx_email on TableA include(BoodedDate)
I think that third option is the one you should go with. There's not much work to be done, and there will be great performance gain. The only problem is that index on varchar field will take a lot of space and impact insert/update operations; but you said that this is a reporting db, so I think you can allow that.

SQL Server Performance With Large Query

Hi everyone I have a couple of queries for some reports in which each query is pulling Data from 35+ tables. Each Table has almost 100K records. All the Queries are Union ALL for Example
;With CTE
AS
(
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table1 WHERE Some_Condition
UNION ALL
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table2 WHERE Some_Condition
UNION ALL
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table3 WHERE Some_Condition
UNION ALL
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table4 WHERE Some_Condition
.
.
. And so on
)
SELECT col1, col2, col3 FROM CTE
ORDER BY col3 DESC
So far I have only tested this query on Dev Server and I can see It takes its time to get the results. All of these 35+ tables are not related with each other and this is the only way I can think of to get all the Desired Data in result set.
Is there a better way to do this kind of query ??
If this is the only way to go for this kind of query how can I
improve the performance for this Query by making any changes if
possible??
My Opinion
I Dont mind having a few dirty-reads in this report. I was thinking of using Query hints with nolock or Transaction Isolation Level set to READ UNCOMMITED.
Will any of this help ???
Edit
Every Table has 5-10 Bit columns and a Corresponding Date column to each Bit Column and my condition for each SELECT Statement is something like
WHERE BitColumn = 1 AND DateColumn IS NULL
Suggestion By Peers
Filtered Index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_Table_Column
ON TableName(BitColumn)
WHERE BitColum = 1
Filtered Index with Included Column
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX fIX_IX_Table_Column
ON TableName(BitColumn)
INCLUDE (DateColumn)
WHERE DateColumn IS NULL
Is this the best way to go ? or any suggestions please ???
There are lots of things that can be done to make it faster.
If I assume you need to do these UNIONs, then you can speed up the query by :
Caching the results, for example,
Can you create an indexed view from the whole statement ? Or there are lots of different WHERE conditions, so there'd be lots of indexed views ? But know that this will slow down modifications (INSERT, etc.) for those tables
Can you cache it in a different way ? Maybe in the mid layer ?
Can it be recalculated in advance ?
Make a covering index. Leading columns are columns form WHERE and then all other columns from the query as included columns
Note that a covering index can be also filtered but filtered index isn't used if the WHERE in the query will have variables / parameters and they can potentially have the value that is not covered by the filtered index (i.e., the row isn't covered)
ORDER BY will cause sort
If you can cache it, then it's fine - no sort will be needed (it's cached sorted)
Otherwise, sort is CPU bound (and I/O bound if not in memory). To speed it up, do you use fast collation ? The performance difference between the slowest and fastest collation can be even 3 times. For example, SQL_EBCDIC280_CP1_CS_AS, SQL_Latin1_General_CP1251_CS_AS, SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS are one of the fastest collations. However, it's hard to make recommendations if I don't know the collation characteristics you need
Network
'network packet size' for the connection that does the SELECT should be the maximum value possible - 32,767 bytes if the result set (number of rows) will be big. This can be set on the client side, e.g., if you use .NET and SqlConnection in the connection string. This will minimize CPU overhead when sending data from the SQL Server and will improve performance on both side - client and server. This can boost performance even by tens of percents if the network was the bottleneck
Use shared memory endpoint if the client is on the SQL Server; otherwise TCP/IP for the best performance
General things
As you said, using isolation level read uncommmitted will improve the performance
...
Probably you can't do changes beyond rewriting the query, etc. but just in case, adding more memory in case it isn't sufficient now, or using SQL Server 2014 in memory features :-), ... would surely help.
There are way too many things that could be tuned but it's hard to point out the key ones if the question isn't very specific.
Hope this helps a bit
well you haven't give any statistics or sample run time of any execution so it is not possible to guess what is slow and is it really slow. how much data is in the result set? it might be just retrieving 100K rows as in result is just taking its time. if the result set of 10000 rows is taking 5 minute, yes definitely something can be looked at. so if you have sample query, number of rows in result and how much time it took for couple of execution with different where conditions, post that. it will help us to compare results.
BTW, do not use CTE just use regular inner and outer query select. make sure the Temp DB is configured properly. LDF and MDF is not default configured for 10% increase. by certain try and error you will come to know how much log and temp DB is increased for verity of range queries and based on that you should set the initial and increment size of the MDF and LDF of temp DB. for the Covered filter index the include column should be col1, col2 and co3 not column Date unless Date is also in select list.
how frequently the data in original 35 tables get updated? if max once per day or if they all get updates almost same time then Indexed-Views can be a possible solution. but if original tables getting updates more than once a day or they gets updates anytime and no where they are in same line then do no think about Indexed-View.
if disk space is not an issue as a last resort try and test performance using trigger on each 35 table. create new table to hold final results as you are expecting from this select query. create insert/update/delete trigger on each 35 table where you check the conditions inside trigger and if yes then only copy the same insert/update/delete to new table. yes you will need a column in new table that identifies which data coming from which table. because Date is Null-Able column you do not get full advantage of Index on that Column as "mostly you are looking for WHERE Date is NULL".
in the new Table only query you always do is where Date is NULL then do not even bother to create that column just create BIT columns and other col1, col2, col3 etc... if you give real example of your query and explain the actual tables, other details can be workout later.
The query hints or the Isolation Level are only going to help you in case of any blocking occurs.
If you dont mind dirty reads and there are locks during the execution it could be a good idea.
The key question is how many data fits the Where clausule you need to use (WHERE BitColumn = 1 AND DateColumn IS NULL)
If the subset filtered by that is small compared with the total number of rows, then use an index on both columns, BitColum and DateColumn, including the columns in the select clausule to avoid "Page Lookup" operations in your query plan.
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_[Choose an IndexName]
ON TableName(BitColumn, DateColumn)
INCLUDE (col1, col2, col3)
Of course the space needed for that covered-filtered index depends on the datatype of the fields involved and the number of rows that satisfy WHERE BitColumn = 1 AND DateColumn IS NULL.
After that I recomend to use a View instead of a CTE:
CREATE VIEW [Choose a ViewName]
AS
(
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table1 WHERE Some_Condition
UNION ALL
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table2 WHERE Some_Condition
.
.
.
)
By doing that, your query plan should look like 35 small index scans, but if most of the data satisfies the where clausule of your index, the performance is going to be similar to scan the 35 source tables and the solution won't worth it.
But You say "Every Table has 5-10 Bit columns and a Corresponding Date column.." then I think is not going to be a good idea to make an index per bit colum.
If you need to filter by using diferent BitColums and Different DateColums, use a compute column in your table:
ALTER TABLE Table1 ADD ComputedFilterFlag AS
CAST(
CASE WHEN BitColum1 = 1 AND DateColumn1 IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN BitColum2 = 1 AND DateColumn2 IS NULL THEN 2 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN BitColum3 = 1 AND DateColumn3 IS NULL THEN 4 ELSE 0 END
AS tinyint)
I recomend you use the value 2^(X-1) for conditionX(BitColumnX=1 and DateColumnX IS NOT NULL). It is going to allow you to filter by using any combination of that criteria.
By using value 3 you can locate all rows that accomplish: Bit1, Date1 and Bit2, Date2 condition. Any condition combination has its corresponding ComputedFilterFlag value because the ComputedFilterFlag acts as a bitmap of conditions.
If you heve less than 8 diferents filters you should use tinyint to save space in the index and decrease the IO operations needed.
Then use an Index over ComputedFilterFlag colum:
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_[Choose an IndexName]
ON TableName(ComputedFilterFlag)
INCLUDE (col1, col2, col3)
And create the view:
CREATE VIEW [Choose a ViewName]
AS
(
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table1 WHERE ComputedFilterFlag IN [Choose the Target Filter Value set]--(1, 3, 5, 7)
UNION ALL
Select col1, col2, col3 FROM Table2 WHERE ComputedFilterFlag IN [Choose the Target Filter Value set]--(1, 3, 5, 7)
.
.
.
)
By doing that, your index coveres all the conditions and your query plan should look like 35 small index seeks.
But this is a tricky solution, may be a refactoring in your table schema could produce simpler and faster results.
You'll never get real time results from a union all query over many tables but I can tell you how I got a little speed out of a similar situation. Hopefully this will help you out.
You can actually run all of them at once with a little bit coding and ingenuity.
You create a global temporary table instead of a common table expression and don't put any keys on the global temporary table it will just slow things down. Then you start all the individual queries which insert into the global temporary table. I've done this a hundred or so times manually and it's faster than a union query because you get a query running on each cpu core. The tricky part is the mechanism to determine when the individual queries have finished your on your own for that piece hence I do these manually.

Getting bulk data into a busy table

I am currently performing analysis on a client's MSSQL Server. I've already fixed many issues (unnecessary indexes, index fragmentation, NEWID() being used for identities all over the shop etc), but I've come across a specific situation that I haven't seen before.
Process 1 imports data into a staging table, then Process 2 copies the data from the staging table using an INSERT INTO. The first process is very quick (it uses BULK INSERT), but the second takes around 30 mins to execute. The "problem" SQL in Process 2 is as follows:
INSERT INTO ProductionTable(field1,field2)
SELECT field1, field2
FROM SourceHeapTable (nolock)
The above INSERT statement inserts hundreds of thousands of records into ProductionTable, each row allocating a UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, and inserting into about 5 different indexes. I appreciate this process is going to take a long time, so my issue is this: while this import is taking place, a 3rd process is responsible for performing constant lookups on ProductionTable - in addition to inserting an additional record into the table as such:
INSERT INTO ProductionTable(fields...)
VALUES(values...)
SELECT *
FROM ProductionTable (nolock)
WHERE ID = #Id
For the 30 or so minutes that the INSERT...SELECT above is taking place, the INSERT INTO times-out.
My immediate thought is that SQL server is locking the entire table during the INSERT...SELECT. I did quite a lot of profiling on the server during my analysis, and there are definitely locks being allocated for the duration of the INSERT...SELECT, though I fail remember what type they were.
Having never needed to insert records into a table from two sources at the same time - at least during an ETL process - I'm not sure how to approach this. I've been looking up INSERT table hints, but most are being made obsolete in future versions.
It looks to me like a CURSOR is the only way to go here?
You could consider BULK INSERT for Process-2 to get the data into the ProductionTable.
Another option would be to batch Process-2 into small batches of around 1000 records and use a Table Valued Parameter to do the INSERT. See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb510489.aspx#BulkInsert
It seems like table lock.
Try portion insert in ETL process. Something like
while 1=1
begin
INSERT INTO ProductionTable(field1,field2)
SELECT top (1000) field1, field2
FROM SourceHeapTable sht (nolock)
where not exists (select 1 from ProductionTable pt where pt.id = sht.id)
-- optional
--waitfor delay '00:00:01.0'
if ##rowcount = 0
break;
end

MAX keyword taking a lot of time to select a value from a column

Well, I have a table which is 40,000,000+ records but when I try to execute a simple query, it takes ~3 min to finish execution. Since I am using the same query in my c# solution, which it needs to execute over 100+ times, the overall performance of the solution is deeply hit.
This is the query that I am using in a proc
DECLARE #Id bigint
SELECT #Id = MAX(ExecutionID) from ExecutionLog where TestID=50881
select #Id
Any help to improve the performance would be great. Thanks.
What indexes do you have on the table? It sounds like you don't have anything even close to useful for this particular query, so I'd suggest trying to do:
CREATE INDEX IX_ExecutionLog_TestID ON ExecutionLog (TestID, ExecutionID)
...at the very least. Your query is filtering by TestID, so this needs to be the primary column in the composite index: if you have no indexes on TestID, then SQL Server will resort to scanning the entire table in order to find rows where TestID = 50881.
It may help to think of indexes on SQL tables in the same way as those you'd find in the back of a big book that are hierarchial and multi-level. If you were looking for something, then you'd manually look under 'T' for TestID then there'd be a sub-heading under TestID for ExecutionID. Without an index entry for TestID, you'd have to read through the entire book looking for TestID, then see if there's a mention of ExecutionID with it. This is effectively what SQL Server has to do.
If you don't have any indexes, then you'll find it useful to review all the queries that hit the table, and ensure that one of those indexes is a clustered index (rather than non-clustered).
Try to re-work everything into something that works in a set based manner.
So, for instance, you could write a select statement like this:
;With OrderedLogs as (
Select ExecutionID,TestID,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY TestID ORDER By ExecutionID desc) as rn
from ExecutionLog
)
select * from OrderedLogs where rn = 1 and TestID in (50881, 50882, 50883)
This would then find the maximum ExecutionID for 3 different tests simultaneously.
You might need to store that result in a table variable/temp table, but hopefully, instead, you can continue building up a larger, single, query, that processes all of the results in parallel.
This is the sort of processing that SQL is meant to be good at - don't cripple the system by iterating through the TestIDs in your code.
If you need to pass many test IDs into a stored procedure for this sort of query, look at Table Valued Parameters.

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