Find which Table in SQL Join takes more time to execute? - sql-server

In Stored Procedure, I have used many inner joins and when I execute my SP, it takes more than one hour.
I am assuming that one particular table cause this problem.
I would like to find out joining which table takes more time.
I tried Query Execution Plan but I expect something other than QEP. Please suggest me.

Using Joins in SQL always takes more time. Check whether tables have proper Index. Only specify the columns in inner join select list.
Ex.
Select A.* from Table1 A
inner join(Select ID from Table2) B
on A.Id = B.Id

Related

Too many parameter values slowing down query

I have a query that runs fairly fast under normal circumstances. But it is running very slow (at least 20 minutes in SSMS) due to how many values are in the filter.
Here's the generic version of it, and you can see that one part is filtering by over 8,000 values, making it run slow.
SELECT DISTINCT
column
FROM
table_a a
JOIN
table_b b ON (a.KEY = b.KEY)
WHERE
a.date BETWEEN #Start and #End
AND b.ID IN (... over 8,000 values)
AND b.place IN ( ... 20 values)
ORDER BY
a.column ASC
It's to the point where it's too slow to use in the production application.
Does anyone know how to fix this, or optimize the query?
To make a query fast, you need indexes.
You need a separate index for the following columns: a.KEY, b.KEY, a.date, b.ID, b.place.
As gotqn wrote before, if you put your 8000 items to a temp table, and inner join it, it will make the query even faster too, but without the index on the other part of the join it will be slow even then.
What you need is to put the filtering values in temporary table. Then use the table to apply filtering using INNER JOIN instead of WHERE IN. For example:
IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#FilterDataSource') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN;
DROP TABLE #FilterDataSource;
END;
CREATE TABLE #FilterDataSource
(
[ID] INT PRIMARY KEY
);
INSERT INTO #FilterDataSource ([ID])
-- you need to split values
SELECT DISTINCT column
FROM table_a a
INNER JOIN table_b b
ON (a.KEY = b.KEY)
INNER JOIN #FilterDataSource FS
ON b.id = FS.ID
WHERE a.date BETWEEN #Start and #End
AND b.place IN ( ... 20 values)
ORDER BY .column ASC;
Few important notes:
we are using temporary table in order to allow parallel execution plans to be used
if you have fast (for example CLR function) for spiting, you can join the function itself
it is not good to use IN with many values, the SQL Server is not able to build always the execution plan which may lead to time outs/internal error - you can find more information here

Why is this CTE so much slower than using temp tables?

We had an issue since a recent update on our database (I made this update, I am guilty here), one of the query used was much slower since then. I tried to modify the query to get faster result, and managed to achieve my goal with temp tables, which is not bad, but I fail to understand why this solution performs better than a CTE based one, which does the same queries. Maybe it has to do that some tables are in a different DB ?
Here's the query that performs badly (22 minutes on our hardware) :
WITH CTE_Patterns AS (
SELECT
PEL.iId_purchased_email_list,
PELE.sEmail
FROM OtherDb.dbo.Purchased_Email_List PEL WITH(NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN OtherDb.dbo.Purchased_Email_List_Email AS PELE WITH(NOLOCK) ON PELE.iId_purchased_email_list = PEL.iId_purchased_email_list
WHERE PEL.bPattern = 1
),
CTE_Emails AS (
SELECT
ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list,
ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email,
ILED.sEmail
FROM dbo.NewsletterService_import_list_email AS ILE WITH(NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN dbo.NewsletterService_import_list_email_distinct AS ILED WITH(NOLOCK) ON ILED.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email_distinct = ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email_distinct
WHERE ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list = 1000
)
SELECT I.iId_newsletterservice_import_list,
I.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email,
BL.iId_purchased_email_list
FROM CTE_Patterns AS BL WITH(NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN CTE_Emails AS I WITH(NOLOCK) ON I.sEmail LIKE BL.sEmail
When running both CTE queries separately, it's super fast (0 secs in SSMS, returns 122 rows and 13k rows), when running the full query, with INNER JOIN on sEmail, it's super slow (22 minutes)
Here's the query that performs well, with temp tables (0 sec on our hardware) and which does the eaxct same thing, returns the same result :
SELECT
PEL.iId_purchased_email_list,
PELE.sEmail
INTO #tb1
FROM OtherDb.dbo.Purchased_Email_List PEL WITH(NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN OtherDb.dbo.Purchased_Email_List_Email PELE ON PELE.iId_purchased_email_list = PEL.iId_purchased_email_list
WHERE PEL.bPattern = 1
SELECT
ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list,
ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email,
ILED.sEmail
INTO #tb2
FROM dbo.NewsletterService_import_list_email AS ILE WITH(NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN dbo.NewsletterService_import_list_email_distinct AS ILED ON ILED.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email_distinct = ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email_distinct
WHERE ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list = 1000
SELECT I.iId_newsletterservice_import_list,
I.iId_newsletterservice_import_list_email,
BL.iId_purchased_email_list
FROM #tb1 AS BL WITH(NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN #tb2 AS I WITH(NOLOCK) ON I.sEmail LIKE BL.sEmail
DROP TABLE #tb1
DROP TABLE #tb2
Tables stats :
OtherDb.dbo.Purchased_Email_List : 13 rows, 2 rows flagged bPattern = 1
OtherDb.dbo.Purchased_Email_List_Email : 324289 rows, 122 rows with patterns (which are used in this issue)
dbo.NewsletterService_import_list_email : 15.5M rows
dbo.NewsletterService_import_list_email_distinct ~1.5M rows
WHERE ILE.iId_newsletterservice_import_list = 1000 retrieves ~ 13k rows
I can post more info about tables on request.
Can someone help me understand this ?
UPDATE
Here is the query plan for the CTE query :
Here is the query plan with temp tables :
As you can see in the query plan, with CTEs, the engine reserves the right to apply them basically as a lookup, even when you want a join.
If it isn't sure enough it can run the whole thing independently, in advance, essentially generating a temp table... let's just run it once for each row.
This is perfect for the recursion queries they can do like magic.
But you're seeing - in the nested Nested Loops - where it can go terribly wrong.
You're already finding the answer on your own by trying the real temp table.
Parallelism. If you noticed in your TEMP TABLE query, the 3rd Query indicates Parallelism in both distributing and gathering the work of the 1st Query. And Parallelism when combining the results of the 1st and 2nd Query. The 1st Query also incidentally has a relative cost of 77%. So the Query Engine in your TEMP TABLE example was able to determine that the 1st Query can benefit from Parallelism. Especially when the Parallelism is Gather Stream and Distribute Stream, so its allowing the divying up of work (join) because the data is distributed in such a way that allows for divying up the work then recombining. Notice the cost of the 2nd Query is 0% so you can ignore that as no cost other than when it needs to be combined.
Looking at the CTE, that is entirely processed Serially and not in Parallel. So somehow with the CTE it could not figure out the 1st Query can be run in Parallel, as well as the relationship of the 1st and 2nd query. Its possible that with multiple CTE expressions it assumes some dependency and did not look ahead far enough.
Another test you can do with the CTE is keep the CTE_Patterns but eliminate the CTE_Emails by putting that as a "subquery derived" table to the 3rd Query in the CTE. It would be curious to see the Execution Plan, and see if there is Parallelism when expressed that way.
In my experience it's best to use CTE's for recursion and temp tables when you need to join back to the data. Makes for a much faster query typically.

SQL FROM clause using n>1 tables

If you add more than one table to the FROM clause (in a query), how does this impact the result set? Does it first select from the first table then from the second and then create a union (i.e., only the rowspace is impacted?) or does it actually do something like a join (i.e., extend the column space)? And when you use multiple tables in the FROM clause, does the WHERE clause filter both sub-result-sets?
Specifying two tables in your FROM clause will execute a JOIN. You can then use the WHERE clause to specify your JOIN conditions. If you fail to do this, you will end-up with a Cartesian product (every row in the first table indiscriminately joined to every row in the second).
The code will look something like this:
SELECT a.*, b.*
FROM table1 a, table2 b
WHERE a.id = b.id
However, I always try to explicitly specify my JOINs (with JOIN and ON keywords). That makes it abundantly clear (for the next developer) as to what you're trying to do. Here's the same JOIN, but explicitly specified:
SELECT a.*, b.*
FROM table1 a
INNER JOIN table2 b ON b.id = a.id
Note that now I don't need a WHERE clause. This method also helps you avoid generating an inadvertent Cartesian product (if you happen to forget your WHERE clause), because the ON is specified explicitly.

Do the order of JOINs make a difference?

Say I have a query like the one below:
SELECT t1.id, t1.Name
FROM Table1 as t1 --800,000 records
INNER JOIN Table2 as t2 --500,000 records
ON t1.fkID = t2.id
INNER JOIN Table3 as t3 -- 1,000 records
ON t1.OtherId = t3.id
Would i see a performance improvement if I changed the order of my joins on Table2 and Table3. See below:
SELECT t1.id, t1.Name
FROM Table1 as t1 --800,000 records
INNER JOIN Table3 as t3 -- 1,000 records
ON t1.OtherId = t3.id
INNER JOIN Table2 as t2 --500,000 records
ON t1.fkID = t2.id
I've heard that the Query Optimizer will try to determine the best order but doesn't always work. Does the version of SQL Server you are using make a difference?
The order of joins makes no difference.
What does make a difference is ensuring your statistics are up to date.
One way to check your statistics is to run a query in SSMS and include the Actual execution plan. If the Estimated number of rows is very different to the Actual number of rows used by any part of the execution plan, then your statistics are out of date.
Statistics are rebuilt when the related indexes are rebuilt. If your production maintenance window allows, I would update statistics every night.
This will update statistics for all tables in a database:
exec sp_MSforeachtable "UPDATE STATISTICS ?"
The order of joins makes a difference only if you specify OPTION (FORCE ORDER). Otherwise, the optimizer will rearrange your query in whichever way it deems most efficient.
There actually are certain instances where I find that I need to use FORCE ORDER, but of course they are few and far between. If you aren't sure, just SET STATISTICS [TIME|IO] ON and see for yourself. You'll probably find that your version runs slower than the optimized version in most if not all cases.
The Query Optimizer should easily handle these as exactly the same query, and work out the best way of doing it.
A lot of it is more about the statistics than the number of records. For example, if the vast majority of values in t1.fkID are identical, this information can influence the QO a lot.

Iterating 1 row at a time with massive amounts of links/joins

Ok, basically what is needed is a way to have row numbers while using a lot of joins and having where clauses using these rownumbers.
such as something like
select ADDRESS.ADDRESS FROM ADDRESS
INNER JOIN WORKHISTORY ON WORKHISTORY.ADDRESSRID=ADDRESS.ADDRESSRID
INNER JOIN PERSON ON PERSON.PERSONRID=WORKHISTORY.PERSONRID
WHERE PERSONRID=<some number> AND WORKHISTORY.ROWNUMBER=1
ROWNUMBER needs to be generated for this query on that one table though. So that if we want to access the second WORKHISTORY record's address, we could just go WORKHISTORY.ROWNUMBER=2 and if say we had two address's that matched, we could cycle through the addresses for one WORKHISTORY record using ADDRESS.ROWNUMBER=1 and ADDRESS.ROWNUMBER=2
This should be capable of being an automatically generated query. Thus, there could be more than 10 inner joins in order to get to the relevant table, and we need to be able to cycle through each table's record independently of the rest of the tables..
I'm aware there is the RANK and ROWNUMBER functions, but I'm not seeing how it will work for me because of all the inner joins
note: in this example query, ROWNUMBER should be automatically generated! It should never be stored in the actual table
Can you use a temp table?
I ask because you can write the code like this:
select a.field1, b.field2, c.field3, identity (int, 1,1) as TableRownumber into #temp
from table1 a
join table2 b on a.table1id = b.table1id
join table3 c on b.table2id = c.table2id
select * from #temp where ...

Resources