Find rows not used by xml column - sql

Question

I have a status table, and I must find the unused statuses.
The status code can be used in activity templates, which have an actionlist xml column with custom formulas.
So far I have written this, which works, but is incredibly slow (more than a minute to get 5000 lines), and I would need to speed it up a bit.
select *
from [status] s
where not exists (
select top 1 1
from Wf_ActivityTemplate at
where at.actionlist.value('.', 'nvarchar(max)') like '%#GetStatusId("' + s.code + '")%'
)
The actionlist column looks like this (irrelevant nodes removed).
As you can see, I need to search in the //ActionTriplet/Argument node, which is itself an xml node stored in text.
<ArrayOfActionTriplet xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<ActionTriplet>
<Priority>1</Priority>
<Argument><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><string>#SetProp("STATUS",#GetStatusId("INTERNAL DESIGN REVIEW"));True</string></Argument>
<ActionCode>APPLY_FORMULA</ActionCode>
<TriggerTaskCode />
<TriggerTaskIsSecondary>false</TriggerTaskIsSecondary>
<TriggerTaskConditionFormula />
</ActionTriplet>
<ActionTriplet>
<Priority>2</Priority>
<Argument><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><string>#SetProp("STATUS",#GetStatusId("VALID"));True</string></Argument>
<ActionCode>APPLY_FORMULA</ActionCode>
<TriggerTaskCode />
<TriggerTaskIsSecondary>false</TriggerTaskIsSecondary>
<TriggerTaskConditionFormula />
</ActionTriplet>
</ArrayOfActionTriplet>

Answer 1

Your code is taking the whole content of your XML, converts it to nvarchar and performs a %x%-like-search, which is always slow. The bigger the text, the slower...
To show another approach I declare a table variable, which mocks up your table, with two rows (see the ID). I search for the code given in #YourCode:
DECLARE #YourCode NVARCHAR(100)=N'INTERNAL DESIGN REVIEW';
DECLARE #YourTable TABLE(ID INT IDENTITY, actionList XML);
INSERT INTO #YourTable(actionList) VALUES(
'<ArrayOfActionTriplet xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<ActionTriplet>
<Priority>1</Priority>
<Argument><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><string>#SetProp("STATUS",#GetStatusId("INTERNAL DESIGN REVIEW"));True</string></Argument>
<ActionCode>APPLY_FORMULA</ActionCode>
<TriggerTaskCode />
<TriggerTaskIsSecondary>false</TriggerTaskIsSecondary>
<TriggerTaskConditionFormula />
</ActionTriplet>
<ActionTriplet>
<Priority>2</Priority>
<Argument><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><string>#SetProp("STATUS",#GetStatusId("VALID"));True</string></Argument>
<ActionCode>APPLY_FORMULA</ActionCode>
<TriggerTaskCode />
<TriggerTaskIsSecondary>false</TriggerTaskIsSecondary>
<TriggerTaskConditionFormula />
</ActionTriplet>
</ArrayOfActionTriplet>')
,(
'<ArrayOfActionTriplet xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<ActionTriplet>
<Priority>1</Priority>
<Argument><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><string>#SetProp("STATUS",#GetStatusId("INTERNAL DESIGN REVIEW"));True</string></Argument>
<ActionCode>APPLY_FORMULA</ActionCode>
<TriggerTaskCode />
<TriggerTaskIsSecondary>false</TriggerTaskIsSecondary>
<TriggerTaskConditionFormula />
</ActionTriplet>
<ActionTriplet>
<Priority>2</Priority>
<Argument><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><string>#SetProp("STATUS",#GetStatusId("VALID"));True</string></Argument>
<ActionCode>APPLY_FORMULA</ActionCode>
<TriggerTaskCode />
<TriggerTaskIsSecondary>false</TriggerTaskIsSecondary>
<TriggerTaskConditionFormula />
</ActionTriplet>
</ArrayOfActionTriplet>');
--This is the query: You'll get back all Argument-elements, where the text within this element contains GetStatusId("TheCode").
SELECT s.ID
,arg.query('.')
FROM #YourTable AS s
CROSS APPLY actionList.nodes('/*:ArrayOfActionTriplet/*:ActionTriplet/*:Argument[fn:contains(.,fn:concat("GetStatusId("",sql:variable("#YourCode"),"")"))]') AS A(arg)
UPDATE
With this query you can cast the inner XML from the encoded form to real XML and get the full string readable:
SELECT s.ID
,arg.query('.')
,InnerXml.value('string[1]','nvarchar(max)')
FROM #YourTable AS s
CROSS APPLY actionList.nodes('/*:ArrayOfActionTriplet/*:ActionTriplet/*:Argument[fn:contains(.,fn:concat("GetStatusId("",sql:variable("#YourCode"),"")"))]') AS A(arg)
CROSS APPLY (SELECT CAST(arg.value('.','varchar(max)') AS XML)) AS Casted(InnerXml)
UPDATE 2: Faster, checking the existance only
If you want nothing more, than to check, wether there is an <Argument> containing your code or not, you might do this:
SELECT s.ID
FROM #YourTable AS s
WHERE actionList.exist('/*:ArrayOfActionTriplet/*:ActionTriplet/*:Argument[fn:contains(.,fn:concat("GetStatusId("",sql:variable("#YourCode"),"")"))]') =1
The final =1 means: The string is inlcuded. With =0 you'd get all rows, where this string is not included