Entity Framework just stopping with timeout during INSERT - sql-server

I have a small c# application which using Entitiy Framework 6 to parse text files into some database structure.
In general file content is parsed into 3 tables:
Table1 --(1-n)-- Table2 --(1-n)-- Table3
the application worked for months without any issues on Dev, Stage and Production environment.
Last week it stopped on stage and now I am trying to figure out why.
One file contains ~ 100 entries Table1, ~2000 Entries Table 2, ~2000 Entries Table 3
.SaveChanges() is called after each file.
I get the following timeout exception:
Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. The statement has been terminated.
AutoDetectChangesEnabled is set to false.
Because there is a 4th table were I execute one update statement after each file there were transactions arround the whole thing, so I removed the 4th table and transaction stuff but the problem persists.
To test if it's just an performance issue I set Database.CommandTimeout = 120 without any effect, it's still running into timeout after 2 minutes.
(Before the issue one file was stored in about 5 seconds which is absolutely ok)
If I look at the SQL Server using SQL Server Profiler I can see the following after .SaveChanges() is called:
SQL Server Profiler
Only the first few INSERT statements for Table3 are shown (always first 4-15 statements and all of them shortly after .SaveChanges())
After that: no new entries until the timeout occurs.
I have absolutely no idea what to check because there is no error or something like that in code.
If I look at SQL Server, there is absolutely no reason for it to delay the queries or something like that (CPU, memory and disk space are ok).
Would be glad for each comment on this, if you want more infos please let me know.
Best Regards

Fixed it by rebuilding fragmented indexes in Table1.
The following article was helpful to understand how to take care of fragmented indexes:
https://solutioncenter.apexsql.com/why-when-and-how-to-rebuild-and-reorganize-sql-server-indexes/
(If some mod is still thinking this is no valid answer, any explanation would be great)

Related

Deleting same number of records from SQL Server database takes either 0.2 sec or 30 sec

I am using SQL Server 2008 R2. I am deleting ~5000 records from a table. While I was testing performance with the same data I have found that the deletion either takes 1 sec or 31 sec.
The test database is confidential so can not share it here.
I have already tried to separate the load and only delete 1000 record at a time but I still experience the deviation.
How should I continue my investigation? What could be the reason for the performance difference?
The query is simple, something like: delete from PART where INVOICE_ID = 64225
DELETE clause uses a lot of system and transaction log resources and thats why it can take a lot of time. If possible try to TRUNCATE the table instead.
When you run the DELETE for the first time perhaps the data wasn't in the buffer pool so had to be read off storage, the second time you run it will be in storage. Other factors will include if the checkpoint process is running your changed pages off to storage. Post your query plan ->
set statistics xml on
select * from sys.objects
set statistics xml off
Argh! After having a closer look at the execution plan I have noticed that one index was missing. After adding the index all executions are running fast. Note that after this I have removed the index to test if the problem comes back. The performance deviations re appeared.

NHibernate.Exceptions.GenericADOException Timeout from code but not from DB

I have an NHibernate Query (which is populating an EXTJS grid)
It's firing 2 queries off to the database, one to get the record count (for paging purposes) and the other to get the top N rows to fill the grid with.
From code, I'm consistently getting an exception on the Select count(*) statement.
NHibernate.Exceptions.GenericADOException:
Failed to execute multi criteria[SQL:
SELECT count(*) as y0_ FROM RecordView this_ inner join ProcessesView
process1_ on this_.ProcessId=process1_.Id inner join BusinessModelsView
businessmo3_ on process1_.BusinessModelId=businessmo3_.Id inner join BatchesView
batch2_ on this_.BatchId=batch2_.Id WHERE this_.ProcessId = ?;
] ---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Timeout expired.
The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server
is not responding.
However if I take that exact query and drop it into an SSMS window, and run it, it executes in a <1 second.
Is NHibernate doing anything "funny" under the hood here. Are there execution plan/cache issues. I'm at a complete loss as to why this is occurring.
Whenever I encountered this error, the reason was locking (never performance). There was two sessions opened (accidently). Both started transaction and one of them locked the table.
The problem could be some not disposed session, or "unintended" singleton... holding opened session.
This answer is not as straigth forward as I wish, but I am sure about the direction. Because I experienced the same (and was guilty)
BTW: as Oskar Berggren found out from you, 30 secods timeout would be related to the <property name="command_timeout">30</property>. I am sure, if you will provide 60, 120 ... it will be not enough because of lock
Your two queries are not handled in the same way by SQL SERVER
your NH query has been compiled on its first execution, based on table statistics and on the first value of the parameter. The generated query plan will then be used for all subsequent calls, witout considering the parameter value
your SQL query (where, I guess, you replace the ? with an actual value) gets a different compilation for each value, based on statistics, and on the value.
Your first NH compilation might have produced a query plan, effective for the first value, but not in the general case.
First, I would suggest that :
you count on a projection (say on the main table id), as it is slightly more effective than count(*), allowing the DB to work only on indexes when possible
you check that you don't miss any index necessary to your query
you check that all your table statistics are up to date
If this does not improve execution time, this post offers some options (recompile might be the good one) :
Query executed from Nhibernate is slow, but from ADO.NET is fast

SQL Server Query Issue - Can't Access Rows

For some strange reason, when trying to access the last 100 records of a table, SQL Server MS sits and spins and takes forever to query the results. Selecting the first 100 records comes back really fast (1 s). Any idea what might be going on? Row lock or something else?
That really seems strange.
Thanks.
It sound like another pid has an open transaction holding locks on the table you're trying to read.
In another SSMS window try running DBCC OPENTRAN (look up the options if this is a higher volume system.
EDIT
+1 to #Martin's comment .... add a nolock hint to your query for quick and dirty way to test.
SELECT ID
FROM MyTable WITH (nolock)

SQL Server lock/hang issue

I'm using SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2, all sp'd up.
I'm getting occasional issues with SQL Server hanging with the CPU usage on 100% on our live server. It seems all the wait time on SQL Sever when this happens is given to SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD.
Here is the Stored Proc that causes the hang. I've added the "WITH (NOLOCK)" in an attempt to fix what seems to be a locking issue.
ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[MostPopularRead]
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT
c.ForeignId , ct.ContentSource as ContentSource
, sum(ch.HitCount * hw.Weight) as Popularity
, (sum(ch.HitCount * hw.Weight) * 100) / #Total as Percent
, #Total as TotalHits
from
ContentHit ch WITH (NOLOCK)
join [Content] c WITH (NOLOCK) on ch.ContentId = c.ContentId
join HitWeight hw WITH (NOLOCK) on ch.HitWeightId = hw.HitWeightId
join ContentType ct WITH (NOLOCK) on c.ContentTypeId = ct.ContentTypeId
where
ch.CreatedDate between #Then and #Now
group by
c.ForeignId , ct.ContentSource
order by
sum(ch.HitCount * hw.HitWeightMultiplier) desc
END
The stored proc reads from the table "ContentHit", which is a table that tracks when content on the site is clicked (it gets hit quite frequently - anything from 4 to 20 hits a minute). So its pretty clear that this table is the source of the problem. There is a stored proc that is called to add hit tracks to the ContentHit table, its pretty trivial, it just builds up a string from the params passed in, which involves a few selects from some lookup tables, followed by the main insert:
BEGIN TRAN
insert into [ContentHit]
(ContentId, HitCount, HitWeightId, ContentHitComment)
values
(#ContentId, isnull(#HitCount,1), isnull(#HitWeightId,1), #ContentHitComment)
COMMIT TRAN
The ContentHit table has a clustered index on its ID column, and I've added another index on CreatedDate since that is used in the select.
When I profile the issue, I see the Stored proc executes for exactly 30 seconds, then the SQL timeout exception occurs. If it makes a difference the web application using it is ASP.NET, and I'm using Subsonic (3) to execute these stored procs.
Can someone please advise how best I can solve this problem? I don't care about reading dirty data...
EDIT:
The MostPopularRead stored proc is called very infrequently - its called on the home page of the site, but the results are cached for a day. The pattern of events that I am seeing is when I clear the cache, multiple requests come in for the home site, and they all hit the stored proc because it hasn't yet been cached. SQL Server then maxes out, and can only be resolved by restarting the sql server process. When I do this, usually the proc will execute OK (in about 200 ms) and put the data back in the cache.
EDIT 2:
I've checked the execution plan, and the query looks quite sound. As I said earlier when it does run it only takes around 200ms to execute. I've added MAXDOP 1 to the select statement to force it to use only one CPU core, but I still see the issue. When I look at the wait times I see that XE_DISPATCHER_WAIT, ONDEMAND_TASK_QUEUE, BROKER_TRANSMITTER, KSOURCE_WAKEUP and BROKER_EVENTHANDLER are taking up a massive amount of wait time.
EDIT 3:
I previously thought that this was related to Subsonic, our ORM, but having switched to ADO.NET, the erros is still live.
The issue is likely concurrency, not locking. SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD occurs when a task voluntarily yields the scheduler for other tasks to execute. During this wait the task is waiting for its quantum to be renewed.
How often is [MostPopularRead] SP called and how long does it take to execute?
The aggregation in your query might be rather CPU-intensive, especially if there are lots of data and/or ineffective indexes. So, you might end up with high CPU pressure - basically, a demand for CPU time is too high.
I'd consider the following:
Check what other queries are executing while CPU is 100% busy? Look at sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks, sys.dm_os_tasks, sys.dm_exec_requests.
Look at the query plan of [MostPopularRead], try to optimize the query. Quite often an ineffective query is the root cause of a performance problem, and query optimization is much more straightforward than other performance improvement techniques.
If the query plan is parallel and the query is often called by multiple clients simultaneously, forcing a single-thread plan with MAXDOP=1 hint might help (abundant use of parallel plans is usually indicated by SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD and CXPACKET waits).
Also, have a look at this paper: Performance tuning with wait statistics. It gives a pretty good summary of different wait types and their impact on performance.
P.S. It is easier to use SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED before a query instead of adding (nolock) to each table.
Remove the NOLOCK hint.
Open a query in SSMS, run SET STATISTICSIO ON and run the query in the procedure. Let it finish and post here the IO stats messages. Then post the table definitions and all indexes defined on them. Then somebody will be able to reply with the proper indexes you need.
As with all SQL performance problem, the text of the query is largely irrelevant without complete schema definition.
A guesstimate covering index would be:
create index ContentHitCreatedDate
on ContentHit (CreatedDate)
include (HitCount, ContentId, HitWeightId);
Update
XE_DISPATCHER_WAIT, ONDEMAND_TASK_QUEUE, BROKER_TRANSMITTER, KSOURCE_WAKEUP and BROKER_EVENTHANDLER: you can safely ignore all these waits. They show up because they represent threads parked and waiting to dispatch XEvents, Service Broker or internal SQL thread pool work items. As they spend most of their time parked and waiting, they get accounted for unrealistic wait times. Ignore them.
If you believe ContentHit to be the source of your problem, you could add a Covering Index
CREATE INDEX IX_CONTENTHIT_CONTENTID_HITWEIGHTID_HITCOUNT
ON dbo.ContentHit (ContentID, HitWeightID, HitCount)
Take a look at the Query Plan if you want to be certain about the bottleneck in your query.
By default settings sql server uses all the core/cpu for all queries (max DoP setting> advanced property, DoP= Degree of Parallelism), which can lead to 100% CPU even if only one core is actually waiting for some I/O.
If you search the net or this site you will find resource explaining it better than me (like monitoring your I/o despite you see a CPU-bound problem).
On one server we couldn't change the application with a bad query that locked down all resources (CPU) but by setting DoP to the half of the number of core we managed to avoid that the server get "stopped". The effect on the queries being less parallel was negligible in our case.
--
Dom
Thanks to all who posted, I got some great SQL Server perf tuning tips.
In the end we ran out time to resolve this mystery - we found a more effecient way to collect this information and cache it in the database, so this solved the problem for us.

There is insufficient system memory in resource pool 'default' to run this query

I'm getting this error:
There is insufficient system memory in resource pool 'default' to run this query.
I'm just running 100,000 simple insert statements as shown below. I got the error approx on the 85,000th insert.
This is a demo for a class I'm taking...
use sampleautogrow
INSERT INTO SampleData VALUES ('fazgypvlhl2svnh1t5di','8l8hzn95y5v20nlmoyzpq17v68chfjh9tbj496t4',1)
INSERT INTO SampleData VALUES ('31t7phmjs7rcwi7d3ctg','852wm0l8zvd7k5vuemo16e67ydk9cq6rzp0f0sbs',2)
INSERT INTO SampleData VALUES ('w3dtv4wsm3ho9l3073o1','udn28w25dogxb9ttwyqeieuz6almxg53a1ki72dq',1)
INSERT INTO SampleData VALUES ('23u5uod07zilskyuhd7d','dopw0c76z7h1mu4p1hrfe8d7ei1z2rpwsffvk3pi',3)
Thanks In Advance,
Jim M
Update: Just noticed something very interesting. I created another database, forgot to create the SampleData table. I ran the query to add the 100,000 rows, and it got the out of memory error before it even complained that the table didn't exist. Thus, I'm guessing it is running out of memory just trying to "read in" my 100,000 lines?
You have 100.000 insert statements in one single batch request? Your server needs more RAM just to parse the request. Buy more RAM, upgrade to x64 or reduce the size of single batches sent to the server. Ie. sprinkle a GO every now and there in the .sql file.
You can try SQLServer Connection Tools application. It has a feature called Massive Sql Runner which executes every command one by one. With this feature very few memory will be used to execute script commands and you will no longer have the problem.
SQL Server Connection Tools

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