Table Spool/Eager Spool - sql-server

I have a query
select * into NewTab from OpenQuery(rmtServer, 'select c1, c2 from rmtTab')
When I look at the execution plan, it tells me that it performs a 'Table Spool/Eager Spool' that 'stores the data in a temporary table to optimize rewinds'
Now I don't anticipate any rewinds. If there is a crash of some sort, I can just drop newTab and start over.
Is there any way I can stop it from storing the data in a temporary table?

It's probably the openquery causing it.
There is no information on how many rows, no statistics, nothing so SQL Server will simply spool the results to allow it to evaluate the later bits I suspect. That's the basic idea.
I'd suggest separating the creation and fill of newtab.
By the way, rewind is not rollback. Rewind has nothing to do with the transaction safety. It's SQL Server anticipating reuse of the rows. Which is correct, because the openquery is a black box.
Look near the bottom of this Simple Talk article for rewinds. You have a "Remote query".
Edit
Based one something I found last week only, look at sp_tableoption.
When used with the OPENROWSET bulk
rowset provider to import data into a
table without indexes, TABLOCK enables
multiple clients to concurrently load
data into the target table with
optimized logging and locking
Try TABLOCK on your fill. We had some fun with a client developer using .net SQLBulkCopy giving very bad performance.
Also this from, Kalen Delaney
It's not intuitive.

create the NewTab first and then do insert into... from openquery.

Related

Can we use ADF Lookup activity perform INSERT operation on SNOWFLAKE table

I have created new dataset using snowflake connector and used the same as source dataset in lookup activity.
Then I am trying to INSERT the record into snowflake using following query.
'INSERT INTO SAMPLE_TABLE VALUES('TEST',1,1,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,'TEST'-- (all values are passed)
Result: The row getting inserted into snowflake but my pipeline got failed stating the below error.
Failure happened on 'Source' side. ErrorCode=UserErrorOdbcInvalidQueryString,'Type=Microsoft.DataTransfer.Common.Shared.HybridDeliveryException,Message=The following ODBC Query is not valid: 'INSERT INTO SAMPLE_TABLE VALUES('TEST',1,1,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,'TEST');'
Could you please share you advise or anylead to solve this problem.
Thanks.
Rajesh
Lookup, as the name suggests, is for searching and retrieving data, not for inserting. However, you can enclose your INSERT code in a procedure and execute it using the Lookup activity.
However, I strongly do not recommend such an action, remember that when inserting data into Snowflake, you create at least one micro-partition with a size of 16MB, if you insert one line at a time, the performance will be terrible and the data will take up a disproportionate amount of space. Remember Snowlfake is not a transaction database (! OLTP).
Instead, it's better to save all the records in an intermediate file and then import the entire file in one move.
You can use the lookup activity to perform operations other than selects, it just HAS to have an output. I've gotten around it with a postgres database doing create tables, truncates, one off inserts by just concatenating a
select current_date;
after the main query.
Note, the sql script activity will definitely be better for this, we are waiting on postgres support in that though.

What is the fastest way of copying a data from a DataWindow/DataStore to SQL Server table using Powerbuilder

We have a datastore (powerbuilder datawindow's twin sister) that contains over 40.000 rows, which takes more than 30 minutes to insert into a Microsoft SQL Server table.
Currently, I am using a script generator that generates the sql table definition and an insert command for each row. At the end, the full script to sql server for execution.
I have already found that script generation process consumes more than 97% of the whole task.
Could you please help me finding a more efficient way of copying my client's data to sql server table?
Edit1 (after NoazDad's comments):
Before answer, please bear in mind that:
Tabel structure is dynamic;
I am trying to avoid using datastore.Update() method;
Not sure it would be faster but you could save the data from the datastore in a tab delimited file then do a BULK INSERT via Sql. Something like
BULK
INSERT CSVTest
FROM 'c:\csvtest.txt'
WITH
(
FIELDTERMINATOR = '\t',
ROWTERMINATOR = '\n'
)
GO
You can try saving the datastore contents into a string variable via ds.object.datawindow.data syntax then save that to a file then execute the SQL.
The way I read this, you're saying that the table that the data is being inserted into doesn't even exist in the schema until the user presses "GO" and initiates the script? And then you create embedded SQL statements that create the table, and insert rows 1 by 1 in a loop?
That's... Well, let's just say I wouldn't do it this way.
Do you not have any idea what the schema will look like ahead of time? If you do, then paint the datastore against that table, and use ds_1.Update() to generate the INSERT statements. Use the datawindow for what it's good for.
If that's not possible, and you must use embedded SQL, then at least perform a COMMIT every 1000 rows or so. Otherwise, SQLServer is building up UNDO logs against the table, in case something goes wrong and they have to be rolled back.
Other ideas...
Disable triggers on the updated table while it is being updated (if possible)
Use the PB Pipeline object, it has settings for commit- might be faster but not much.
Best idea. Do something on the server side. I'd try to create SQL statements for your 40K inserts, and call a stored procedure sending all 40k insert/update statements and let the stored procedure handle the inserts/updates.
Create a dummy table with a few columns, one being a long text, update it with a block of SQL statements like mentioned in last idea and have a process that delimits and executes the sql statements.
Some variant of above but using bulk insert as mentioned by Matt. Bulk insert is the fastest way to insert many rows.
Maybe try something with autocommit so that you commit only at the end, or every 10k rows as mentioned by someone already.
PB has an async option in the transaction object (connection) maybe you could let the update go in the background and let the user continue. This doesn't work with all databases and may not work in your situation. I haven't had much luck using async option.
The reason your process is so slow is that PB does each update separately, so you are hitting the network and database constantly. There may be triggers on the update table and those are getting hammered too. Slamming them in on the server eliminates network lag and is much faster. Using bulk load is ever faster yet because it doesn't run triggers and eliminates a lot of the database management overhead.
Expanding on the idea of sending SQL statements to a procedure, you can create the sql very easily by doing a dw_1.saveas( SQL! ) (syntax is not right) and send it to the server all at once. Let the server parse it and run the SQL.
Send something like this to the server via procedure, it should update pretty fast as it is only one statement:
Update TABLE set (col1, col2) values ('a', 'b')|Update TABLE set (col1, col2) values ('a', 'b')|Update TABLE set (col1, col2) values ('a', 'b')
In procedure:
Parse the sql statements, and run them. Easy peasy.
While Matt's answer is probably best, I have another option. (Options are good, right?)
I'm not sure why you're avoiding the datastore.Update() method. I'm assuming it's because the schema doesn't exist at the time of the update. If that's the only reason, it can still be used, thus eliminating 40,000 instances of string manipulation to generate valid SQL.
To do it, you would first create the table. Then, you would use datastore.SyntaxFromSQL() to create a datastore that's bound to the table. It might take a couple of Modify() statements to make the datastore update-able. Then you'd move the data from your original datastore to the update-able, bound datastore. (Look at RowsMove() or dot notation.) After that, an Update() statement generates all of your SQL without the overhead of string parsing and looping.

Does inserting data into SQL Server lock the whole table?

I am using Entity Framework, and I am inserting records into our database which include a blob field. The blob field can be up to 5 MB of data.
When inserting a record into this table, does it lock the whole table?
So if you are querying any data from the table, will it block until the insert is done (I realise there are ways around this, but I am talking by default)?
How long will it take before it causes a deadlock? Will that time depend on how much load is on the server, e.g. if there is not much load, will it take longer to cause a deadlock?
Is there a way to monitor and see what is locked at any particular time?
If each thread is doing queries on single tables, is there then a case where blocking can occur? So isn't it the case that a deadlock can only occur if you have a query which has a join and is acting on multiple tables?
This is taking into account that most of my code is just a bunch of select statements, not heaps of long running transactions or anything like that.
Holy cow, you've got a lot of questions in here, heh. Here's a few answers:
When inserting a record into this table, does it lock the whole table?
Not by default, but if you use the TABLOCK hint or if you're doing certain kinds of bulk load operations, then yes.
So if you are querying any data from the table will it block until the insert is done (I realise there are ways around this, but I am talking by default)?
This one gets a little trickier. If someone's trying to select data from a page in the table that you've got locked, then yes, you'll block 'em. You can work around that with things like the NOLOCK hint on a select statement or by using Read Committed Snapshot Isolation. For a starting point on how isolation levels work, check out Kendra Little's isolation levels poster.
How long will it take before it causes a deadlock? Will that time depend on how much load is on the server, e.g. if there is not much load will it take longer to cause a deadlock?
Deadlocks aren't based on time - they're based on dependencies. Say we've got this situation:
Query A is holding a bunch of locks, and to finish his query, he needs stuff that's locked by Query B
Query B is also holding a bunch of locks, and to finish his query, he needs stuff that's locked by Query A
Neither query can move forward (think Mexican standoff) so SQL Server calls it a draw, shoots somebody's query in the back, releases his locks, and lets the other query keep going. SQL Server picks the victim based on which one will be less expensive to roll back. If you want to get fancy, you can use SET DEADLOCK_PRIORITY LOW on particular queries to paint targets on their back, and SQL Server will shoot them first.
Is there a way to monitor and see what is locked at any particular time?
Absolutely - there's Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) you can query like sys.dm_tran_locks, but the easiest way is to use Adam Machanic's free sp_WhoIsActive stored proc. It's a really slick replacement for sp_who that you can call like this:
sp_WhoIsActive #get_locks = 1
For each running query, you'll get a little XML that describes all of the locks it holds. There's also a Blocking column, so you can see who's blocking who. To interpret the locks being held, you'll want to check the Books Online descriptions of lock types.
If each thread is doing queries on single tables, is there then a case where blocking can occur? So isn't it the case that a deadlock can only occur if you have a query which has a join and is acting on multiple tables?
Believe it or not, a single query can actually deadlock itself, and yes, queries can deadlock on just one table. To learn even more about deadlocks, check out The Difficulty with Deadlocks by Jeremiah Peschka.
If you have direct control over the SQL, you can force row level locking using:
INSERT INTO WITH (ROWLOCK) MyTable(Id, BigColumn)
VALUES(...)
These two answers might be helpful:
Is it possible to force row level locking in SQL Server?
Locking a table with a select in Entity Framework
To view current held locks in Management Studio, look under the server, then under Management/Activity Monitor. It has a section for locks by object, so you should be able to see whether the inserts are really causing a problem.
Deadlock errors generally return quite quickly. Deadlock states do not occur as a result of a timeout error occurring while waiting for a lock. Deadlock is detected by SQL Server by looking for cycles in the lock requests.
The best answer I can come up with is: It depends.
The best way to check is to find your connection SPID and use sp_lock SPID to check if the lock mode is X on the TAB type. You can also verify the table name with SELECT OBJECT_NAME(objid). I also like to use the below query to check for locking.
SELECT RESOURCE_TYPE,RESOURCE_SUBTYPE,DB_NAME(RESOURCE_DATABASE_ID) AS 'DATABASE',resource_database_id DBID,
RESOURCE_DESCRIPTION,RESOURCE_ASSOCIATED_ENTITY_ID,REQUEST_MODE,REQUEST_SESSION_ID,
CASE WHEN RESOURCE_TYPE = 'OBJECT' THEN OBJECT_NAME(RESOURCE_ASSOCIATED_ENTITY_ID,RESOURCE_DATABASE_ID) ELSE '' END OBJETO
FROM SYS.DM_TRAN_LOCKS (NOLOCK)
WHERE REQUEST_SESSION_ID = --SPID here
In SQL Server 2008 (and later) you can disable the lock escalation on the table and enforce a WITH (ROWLOCK) in your insert clause effectively forcing a rowlock. This can't be done prior to SQL Server 2008 (you can write WITH ROWLOCK, but SQL Server can choose to ignore it).
I'm speaking generals here, and I don't have much experience with BLOBs as I usually advise developers to avoid them, especially if larger than 1 MB.

Is deleting all records in a table a bad practice in SQL Server?

I am moving a system from a VB/Access app to SQL server. One common thing in the access database is the use of tables to hold data that is being calculated and then using that data for a report.
eg.
delete from treporttable
insert into treporttable (.... this thing and that thing)
Update treportable set x = x * price where (...etc)
and then report runs from treporttable
I have heard that SQL server does not like it when all records from a table are deleted as it creates huge logs etc. I tried temp sql tables but they don't persists long enough for the report which is in a different process to run and report off of.
There are a number of places where this is done to different report tables in the application. The reports can be run many times a day and have a large number of records created in the report tables.
Can anyone tell me if there is a best practise for this or if my information about the logs is incorrect and this code will be fine in SQL server.
If you do not need to log the deletion activity you can use the truncate table command.
From books online:
TRUNCATE TABLE is functionally
identical to DELETE statement with no
WHERE clause: both remove all rows in
the table. But TRUNCATE TABLE is
faster and uses fewer system and
transaction log resources than DELETE.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260621(SQL.80).aspx
delete from sometable
Is going to allow you to rollback the change. So if your table is very large, then this can cause a lot of memory useage and time.
However, if you have no fear of failure then:
truncate sometable
Will perform nearly instantly, and with minimal memory requirements. There is no rollback though.
To Nathan Feger:
You can rollback from TRUNCATE. See for yourself:
CREATE TABLE dbo.Test(i INT);
GO
INSERT dbo.Test(i) SELECT 1;
GO
BEGIN TRAN
TRUNCATE TABLE dbo.Test;
SELECT i FROM dbo.Test;
ROLLBACK
GO
SELECT i FROM dbo.Test;
GO
i
(0 row(s) affected)
i
1
(1 row(s) affected)
You could also DROP the table, and recreate it...if there are no relationships.
The [DROP table] statement is transactionally safe whereas [TRUNCATE] is not.
So it depends on your schema which direction you want to go!!
Also, use SQL Profiler to analyze your execution times. Test it out and see which is best!!
The answer depends on the recovery model of your database. If you are in full recovery mode, then you have transaction logs that could become very large when you delete a lot of data. However, if you're backing up transaction logs on a regular basis to free the space, this might not be a concern for you.
Generally speaking, if the transaction logging doesn't matter to you at all, you should TRUNCATE the table instead. Be mindful, though, of any key seeds, because TRUNCATE will reseed the table.
EDIT: Note that even if the recovery model is set to Simple, your transaction logs will grow during a mass delete. The transaction logs will just be cleared afterward (without releasing the space). The idea is that DELETE will create a transaction even temporarily.
Consider using temporary tables. Their names start with # and they are deleted when nobody refers to them. Example:
create table #myreport (
id identity,
col1,
...
)
Temporary tables are made to be thrown away, and that happens very efficiently.
Another option is using TRUNCATE TABLE instead of DELETE. The truncate will not grow the log file.
I think your example has a possible concurrency issue. What if multiple processes are using the table at the same time? If you add a JOB_ID column or something like that will allow you to clear the relevant entries in this table without clobbering the data being used by another process.
Actually tables such as treporttable do not need to be recovered to a point of time. As such, they can live in a separate database with simple recovery mode. That eases the burden of logging.
There are a number of ways to handle this. First you can move the creation of the data to running of the report itself. This I feel is the best way to handle, then you can use temp tables to temporarily stage your data and no one will have concurency issues if multiple people try to run the report at the same time. Depending on how many reports we are talking about, it could take some time to do this, so you may need another short term solutio n as well.
Second you could move all your reporting tables to a difffernt db that is set to simple mode and truncate them before running your queries to populate. This is closest to your current process, but if multiple users are trying to run the same report could be an issue.
Third you could set up a job to populate the tables (still in separate db set to simple recovery) once a day (truncating at that time). Then anyone running a report that day will see the same data and there will be no concurrency issues. However the data will not be up-to-the minute. You also could set up a reporting data awarehouse, but that is probably overkill in your case.

Long query prevents inserts

I have a query that runs each night on a table with a bunch of records (200,000+). This application simply iterates over the results (using a DbDataReader in a C# app if that's relevant) and processes each one. The processing is done outside of the database altogether. During the time that the application is iterating over the results I am unable to insert any records into the table that I am querying for. The insert statements just hang and eventually timeout. The inserts are done in completely separate applications.
Does SQL Server lock the table down while a query is being done? This seems like an overly aggressive locking policy. I could understand how there could be a conflict between the query and newly inserted records, but I would be perfectly ok if records inserted after the query started were simply not included in the results.
Any ways to avoid this?
Update:
The WITH (NOLOCK) definitely did the trick. As some of you pointed out, this isn't the cleanest approach. I can't really query everything into memory given the amount of records and some of the columns in this table are binary (some records are actually about 1MB of total data).
The other suggestion, was to query for batches of records at a time. This isn't a bad idea either, but it does bring up a new issue: database independent queries. Right now the application can work with a variety of different databases (Oracle, MySQL, Access, etc). Each database has their own way of limiting the rows returned in a query. But maybe this is better saved for another question?
Back on topic, the "WITH (NOLOCK)" clause is certainly SQL Server specific, is there any way to keep this out of my query (and thus preventing it from working with other databases)? Maybe I could somehow specify a parameter on the DbCommand object? Or can I specify the locking policy at the database level? That is, change some properties in SQL Server itself that will prevent the table from locking like this by default?
If you're using SQL Server 2005+, then how about giving the new MVCC snapshot isolation a try. I've had good results with it:
ALTER DATABASE SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE;
ALTER DATABASE SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON;
ALTER DATABASE SET MULTI_USER;
It will stop readers blocking writers and vice-versa. It eliminates many deadlocks, at very little cost.
It depends what Isolation Level you are using. You might try doing your selects using the With (NoLock) hint, that will prevent the read locks, but will also mean the data being read might change before the selecting transaction completes.
The first thing you could do is try to add the "WITH (NOLOCK)" to any tables you have in your query. This will "Tame down" the locking that SQL Server does. An example of using "NOLOCK" on a join is as follows...
SELECT COUNT(Users.UserID)
FROM Users WITH (NOLOCK)
JOIN UsersInUserGroups WITH (NOLOCK) ON
Users.UserID = UsersInUserGroups.UserID
Another option is to use a dataset instead of a datareader. A datareader is a "fire hose" technique that stays connected to the tables while your program is processing and basically handling the table row by row through the hose. A dataset uses a "disconnected" methodology where all the data is loaded into memory and then the connection is closed. Your program can then loop the data in memory without having to worry about locking. However, if this is a really large amount of data, there maybe memory issues.
Hope this helps.
If you add the WITH (NOLOCK) hint after a table name in the FROM clause it should make sure it doesn't lock, and it doesn't care about reading data that is locked. You might get "out of date" results if you are writing at the same time, but if you don't care about that then you should be fine.
I reckon your best way of avoiding this is to do it in SQL rather than in the application.
You can add a
WAITFOR DELAY '000:00:01'
at the end of each loop iteration to provide time for other processes to run - just make sure that you haven't initiated a TRANSACTION such that all other processes are locked out anyway
The query is performing a table lock, thus the inserts are failing.
It sounds to me like you're keeping a lock on the table while processing the results.
You should instead load them into an array or collection of some sort, and close the database connection.
Then process the array.
In addition, while you're doing your select use either:
WITH(NOLOCK) or WITH(READPAST)
I'm not a big fan of using lock hints as you could end up with dirty reads or other weirdness. A couple of other ideas:
Can you break the number of rows down so you don't grab 200k at a time? Is there a way to tell whether you've processed a row - a flag, a timestamp - you could use to make the query? Your query could be 'SELECT TOP 5000 ...' getting a differnet 5k each time. Shorter queries mean shorter-lived locks.
If you can use smaller sets of rows I like the DataSet vs. IDataReader idea. You will be loading data into memory and not consuming any SQL locks, but the amount of memory can cause other problems.
-Brian
You should be able to set the isolation level at the .NET level so that you don't have to include the WITH (NOLOCK) hint.
If you want to go with the batching option, you should be able to specify the Rowcount setting from the .NET level which would tell the database to only return n number of records. By setting these settings at the .NET level they should become database independent and work across all the platforms.

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