Query not using indexes using using Table function - sql

I have following query:
select i.pkey as instrument_pkey,
p.asof,
p.price,
p.lastprice as lastprice,
p.settlementprice as settlement_price,
p.snaptime,
p.owner as source_id,
i.type as instrument_type
from quotes_mxsequities p,
instruments i,
(select instrument, maxbackdays
from TABLE(cast (:H_ARRAY as R_TAB))) lbd
where p.asof between :ASOF - lbd.maxbackdays and :ASOF
and p.instrument = lbd.instrument
and p.owner = :SOURCE_ID
and p.instrument = i.pkey
Since I have started using table function, query has started doing full table scan on table quotes_mxsequities which is large table.
Earlier when I used IN clause include of table function index was being used.
Any suggestion on how to enforce index usage?
EDIT:
I will try to get explain plan but just to add, H_ARRAY is expected to have around 10k entries. quotes_mxsequities is a large table millions of rows. Instruments is again a large table but has lesser rows than quotes_mxsequities.
Full table scan is happening for quotes_mxsequities while instruments is using index

Quite difficult to answer with no explain plan and informations about table structure, number of rows, etc.
As a general, simplified approach, you could try to force the use on an index with the INDEX hint.
Your problem can even be due to a wrong order in table processing; you can try to make Oracle follow the right order ( I suppose LBD first) with the LEADING hint.
Another point could be the full access, while you probably need a NESTED LOOP; in this case you can try the USE_NL hint

It's hard to be sure form the limited information provided, but it looks like this is an issue with the optimiser not being able to establish the cardinality of the table collection expression, since its contents aren't known at parse time. With a stored nested table the statistics would be available, but here there are none for it to use.
Without that information the optimiser defaults to guessing your table collection will have 8K entries, and uses that as the cardinality estimate; if that is a significant proportion of the number of rows in quotes_mxsequities then it will decide the index isn't going to be efficient, and will use a full table scan.
You can use the undocumented cardinality hint to tell the optimiser roughly how many elements you actually expect in the collection; you presumably won't know exactly, but you might know you usually expect around 10. So you could add a hint:
select /*+ CARDINALITY(lbd, 10) */ i.pkey as instrument_pkey,
You may also find the dynamic sampling hint useful here, but without your real data to look at, the cardinality hint applies to the basic execution plan so it's easy to see its effect.
Incidentally, you don't need the subquery on the table expression, you can simplify slightly to:
from TABLE(cast (:H_ARRAY as R_TAB)) lbd,
quotes_mxsequities p,
instruments i
or even better use modern join syntax:
select /*+ CARDINALITY(lbd, 10) */ i.pkey as instrument_pkey,
p.asof,
p.price,
p.lastprice as lastprice,
p.settlementprice as settlement_price,
p.snaptime,
p.owner as source_id,
i.type as instrument_type
from TABLE(cast (:H_ARRAY as R_TAB)) lbd
join quotes_mxsequities p
on p.asof between :ASOF - lbd.maxbackdays and :ASOF
and p.instrument = lbd.instrument
join instruments i
on i.pkey = p.instrument
where p.owner = :SOURCE_ID;

Related

What colums to index for a JOIN with WHERE

Assume you have a JOIN with a WHERE:
SELECT *
FROM partners
JOIN orders
ON partners.partner_id = orders.partner_id
WHERE orders.date
BETWEEN 20140401 AND 20140501
1) An index on partner_id in both tables will speed up the JOIN, right?
2) An index on orders.date will speed up the WHERE clause?
3) But as far as I know, one SELECT can not use more than one index. So which one will be used?
This is your query, with the quoting fixed (and assuming orders.date is really a date type):
SELECT *
FROM partners JOIN
orders
ON partners.partner_id = orders.partner_id
WHERE orders.date BETWEEN '2014-04-01' AND '2014-05-01';
For inner join, there are basically two execution strategies. The engine can start with the partners table and find all matches in orders. Or it can start with orders can find all matches in partners. (There are then different algorithms that can be used.)
For the first approach, the only index what would help is orders(partner_id, orderdate). For the second approach, the best index is orders(orderdate, partner_id). Note that these are not equivalent.
In most scenarios like this, I would expect the orders table to be larger and the filtering to be important. That would suggest that the best execution plan is to start with the orders table and filter it first, using the second option.
To start, an index is used for an operator not for the SELECT statement. Therefore one index will be used for reading data from the partner table and another index could be used to get data from orders table.
I think that the best strategy in this case would be to have a clustered index on partners.partner_id and one non-clustered index on orders.partner_id and orders.date
See the case. It is a sample case
SELECT *
FROM [dbo].[LUEducation] E
JOIN LUCitizen C On C.skCitizen = E.skCitizen
WHERE C.skCitizen <= 100
AND E.skSchool = 26069
Execution Plan:
The sql engine uses more than 1 index at a time.
Without knowing which DBMS you are using it's difficult to know what execution plan the optimizer is going to choose.
Here's a typical one:
Do a range scan on orders.date, using a sorted index for that purpose.
Do a loop join on the results, doing one lookup on
partners.partner_id for each entry, using the index on that field.
In this plan, an index on orders.partner_id will not be used.
However, if the WHERE clause were not there, you might see an execution plan that
does a merge join using the indexes on partners.partner_id and
orders.partner_id.
This terminology may be confusing, because the documentation for your DBMS may use different terms.
One select can only use one index per table (index-merge is an exception).
You pointed out the right indexes in your question.
You don't really need an index on orders.partner_id for this query,
but it is necessary for foreign key constraints and join in other direction.

Why does breaking out this correlated subquery vastly improve performance?

I tried running this query against two tables which were very different sizes - #temp was about 15,000 rows, and Member is about 70,000,000, about 68,000,000 of which do not have the ID 307.
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM #temp
WHERE CAST(individual_id as varchar) NOT IN (
SELECT IndividualID
FROM Member m
INNER JOIN Person p ON p.PersonID = m.PersonID
WHERE CompanyID <> 307)
This query ran for 18 hours, before I killed it and tried something else, which was:
SELECT IndividualID
INTO #source
FROM Member m
INNER JOIN Person p ON p.PersonID = m.PersonID
WHERE CompanyID <> 307
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM #temp
WHERE CAST(individual_id AS VARCHAR) NOT IN (
SELECT IndividualID
FROM #source)
And this ran for less than a second before giving me a result.
I was pretty surprised by this. I'm a middle-tier developer rather than a SQL expert and my understanding of what goes on under the hood is a little murky, but I would have presumed that, since the sub-query in my first attempt is the exact same code, asking for the exact same data as in the second attempt, that these would be roughly equivalent.
But that's obviously wrong. I can't look at the execution plan for my original query to see what SQL Server is trying to do. So can someone kindly explain why splitting the data out into a temp table is so much faster?
EDIT: Table schemas and indexes
The #temp table has two columns, Individual_ID int and Source_Code varchar(50)
Member and Person are more complex. They has 29 and 13 columns respectively so I don't really want to post them all in full. PersonID is an int and is the PK on Person and an FK on Member. IndividualID is a column on Person - this is not clear in the query as written.
I tried using a LEFT JOIN instead of NOT IN before asking the question. The performance on the second query wasn't noticeably different - both were sub-second. On the first query I let it run for an hour before stopping it, presuming it would make no significant difference.
I also added an index on #source, just like on the original table, so the performance impact should be identical.
First, your query has two faux pas's that really stick out. You are converting to varchar(), but you do not include a length argument. This should not be allowed! The default length varies by context and you need to be explicit.
Second, you are matching two keys in different tables and they seemingly have different types. Foreign key references should always have the same type. This can have a very big impact on performance. If you are dealing with tables that have millions of rows, then you need to pay some attention to the data structure.
To understand the difference in performance, you need to understand execution plans. The two queries have very different execution plans. My (educated) guess is that the first version version is using a nested loop join algorithm. The second version is using a more sophisticated algorithm. In your case, this would be due to the ability of SQL Server to maintain statistics on tables. So, instantiating the intermediate results actually helps the optimizer produce a better query plan.
The subject of how best to write this logic has been investigated a lot. Here is a very good discussion on the subject by Aaron Bertrand.
I do agree with Aaron on the preference for not exists in this case:
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM #temp t
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1
FROM Member m JOIN
Person p
ON p.PersonID = m.PersonID
WHERE MemberID <> 307 and individual_id = t. individual_id
);
However, I don't know if this will have better performance in this particular case.
This line is probably what kills the first query
WHERE CAST(individual_id as varchar) NOT IN
My guess would be that this forces a table scan rather than using any indexes.

Horrible Oracle update performance

I am performing an update with a query like this:
UPDATE (SELECT h.m_id,
m.id
FROM h
INNER JOIN m
ON h.foo = m.foo)
SET m_id = id
WHERE m_id IS NULL
Some info:
Table h is roughly ~5 million rows
All rows in table h have NULL values for m_id
Table m is roughly ~500 thousand rows
m_id on table h is an indexed foreign key pointing to id on table m
id on table m is the primary key
There are indexes on m.foo and h.foo
The EXPLAIN PLAN for this query indicated a hash join and full table scans, but I'm no DBA, so I can't really interpret it very well.
The query itself ran for several hours and did not complete. I would have expected it to complete in no more than a few minutes. I've also attempted the following query rewrite:
UPDATE h
SET m_id = (SELECT id
FROM m
WHERE m.foo = h.foo)
WHERE m_id IS NULL
The EXPLAIN PLAN for this mentioned ROWID lookups and index usage, but it also went on for several hours without completing. I've also always been under the impression that queries like this would cause the subquery to be executed for every result from the outer query's predicate, so I would expect very poor performance from this rewrite anyway.
Is there anything wrong with my approach, or is my problem related to indexes, tablespace, or some other non-query-related factor?
Edit:
I'm also having abysmal performance from simple count queries like this:
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM h
WHERE m_id IS NULL
These queries are taking anywhere from ~30 seconds to sometimes ~30 minutes(!).
I am noticing no locks, but the tablespace for these tables is sitting at 99.5% usage (only ~6MB free) right now. I've been told that this shouldn't matter as long as indexes are being used, but I don't know...
Some points:
Oracle does not index NULL values (it will index a NULL that is part of a globally non-null tuple, but that's about it).
Oracle is going for a HASH JOIN because of the size of both h and m. This is likely the best option performance-wise.
The second UPDATE might get Oracle to use indexes, but then Oracle is usually smart about merging subqueries. And it would be a worse plan anyway.
Do you have recent, reasonable statistics for your schema? Oracle really needs decent statistics.
In your execution plan, which is the first table in the HASH JOIN? For best performance it should be the smaller table (m in your case). If you don't have good cardinality statistics, Oracle will get messed up. You can force Oracle to assume fixed cardinalities with the cardinality hint, it may help Oracle get a better plan.
For example, in your first query:
UPDATE (SELECT /*+ cardinality(h 5000000) cardinality(m 500000) */
h.m_id, m.id
FROM h
INNER JOIN m
ON h.foo = m.foo)
SET m_id = id
WHERE m_id IS NULL
In Oracle, FULL SCAN reads not only every record in the table, it basically reads all storage allocated up to the maximum used (the high water mark in Oracle documentation). So if you have had a lot of deleted rows your tables might need some cleaning up. I have seen a SELECT COUNT(*) on an empty table consume 30+ seconds because the table in question had like 250 million deleted rows. If that is the case, I suggest analyzing your specific case with a DBA, so he/she can reclaim space from deleted rows and lower the high water mark.
As far as I remember, a WHERE m_id IS NULL performs a full-table scan, since NULL values cannot be indexed.
Full-table scan means, that the engine needs to read every record in the table to evaluate the WHERE condition, and cannot use an index.
You could try to add a virtual column set to a not-null value if m_id IS NULL, and index this column, and use this column in the WHERE condition.
Then you could also move the WHERE condition from the UPDATE statement to the sub-select, which will probably make the statement faster.
Since JOINs are expensive, rewriting INNER JOIN m ON h.foo = m.foo as
WHERE h.foo IN (SELECT m.foo FROM m WHERE m.foo IS NOT NULL)
may also help.
For large tables, MERGE is often much faster than UPDATE. Try this (untested):
MERGE INTO h USING
(SELECT h.h_id,
m.id as new_m_id
FROM h
INNER JOIN m
ON h.foo = m.foo
WHERE h.m_id IS NULL
) new_data
ON (h.h_id = new_data.h_id)
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE SET h.m_id = new_data.new_m_id;
Try undocumented hint /*+ BYPASS_UJVC */. If it works, add an UNIQUE/PK constraint on m.foo.
I would update the table in iterations, for example, add a condition according to where h.date_created > sysdate-30 and after it finishes I would run the same query and change the condition to: where h.date_created between sysdate-30 and sysdate-60 etc. If you don't have a column like date_created maybe there's another column you can filter by ? for example: WHERE m.foo = h.foo AND m.foo between 1 and 10
Only the result of plan can explain why the cost of this update is high, but an educated guess will be that both tables are very big and that there are many NULL values as well as a lot of matching (m.foo = h.foo)...

SQL Server search filter and order by performance issues

We have a table value function that returns a list of people you may access, and we have a relation between a search and a person called search result.
What we want to do is that wan't to select all people from the search and present them.
The query looks like this
SELECT qm.PersonID, p.FullName
FROM QueryMembership qm
INNER JOIN dbo.GetPersonAccess(1) ON GetPersonAccess.PersonID = qm.PersonID
INNER JOIN Person p ON p.PersonID = qm.PersonID
WHERE qm.QueryID = 1234
There are only 25 rows with QueryID=1234 but there are almost 5 million rows total in the QueryMembership table. The person table has about 40K people in it.
QueryID is not a PK, but it is an index. The query plan tells me 97% of the total cost is spent doing "Key Lookup" witht the seek predicate.
QueryMembershipID = Scalar Operator (QueryMembership.QueryMembershipID as QM.QueryMembershipID)
Why is the PK in there when it's not used in the query at all? and why is it taking so long time?
The number of people total 25, with the index, this should be a table scan for all the QueryMembership rows that have QueryID=1234 and then a JOIN on the 25 people that exists in the table value function. Which btw only have to be evaluated once and completes in less than 1 second.
if you want to avoid "key lookup", use covered index
create index ix_QueryMembership_NameHere on QueryMembership (QueryID)
include (PersonID);
add more column names, that you gonna select in include arguments.
for the point that, why PK's "key lookup" working so slow, try DBCC FREEPROCCACHE, ALTER INDEX ALL ON QueryMembership REBUILD, ALTER INDEX ALL ON QueryMembership REORGANIZE
This may help if your PK's index is disabled, or cache keeps wrong plan.
You should define indexes on the tables you query. In particular on columns referenced in the WHERE and ORDER BY clauses.
Use the Database Tuning Advisor to see what SQL Server recommends.
For specifics, of course you would need to post your query and table design.
But I have to make a couple of points here:
You've already jumped to the conclusion that the slowness is a result of the ORDER BY clause. I doubt it. The real test is whether or not removing the ORDER BY speeds up the query, which you haven't done. Dollars to donuts, it won't make a difference.
You only get the "log n" in your big-O claim when the optimizer actually chooses to use the index you defined. That may not be happening because your index may not be selective enough. The thing that makes your temp table solution faster than the optimizer's solution is that you know something about the subset of data being returned that the optimizer does not (specifically, that it is a really small subset of data). If your indexes are not selective enough for your query, the optimizer can't always reasonably assume this, and it will choose a plan that avoids what it thinks could be a worst-case scenario of tons of index lookups, followed by tons of seeks and then a big sort. Oftentimes, it chooses to scan and hash instead. So what you did with the temp table is often a way to solve this problem. Often you can narrow down your indexes or create an indexed view on the subset of data you want to work against. It all depends on the specifics of your wuery.
You need indexes on your WHERE and ORDER BY clauses. I am not an expert but I would bet it is doing a table scan for each row. Since your speed issue is resolved by Removing the INNER JOIN or the ORDER BY I bet the issue is specifically with the join. I bet it is doing the table scan on your joined table because of the sort. By putting an index on the columns in your WHERE clause first you will be able to see if that is in fact the case.
Have you tried restructuring the query into a CTE to separate the TVF call? So, something like:
With QueryMembershipPerson
(
Select QM.PersonId, P.Fullname
From QueryMembership As qm
Join Person As P
On P.PersonId = QM.PersonId
Where QM.QueryId = 1234
)
Select PersonId, Fullname
From QueryMembershipPerson As QMP
Join dbo.GetPersonAccess(1) As PA
On PA.PersonId = QMP.PersonId
EDIT: Btw, I'm assuming that there is an index on PersonId in both the QueryMembership and the Person table.
EDIT What about two table expressions like so:
With
QueryMembershipPerson As
(
Select QM.PersonId, P.Fullname
From QueryMembership As qm
Join Person As P
On P.PersonId = QM.PersonId
Where QM.QueryId = 1234
)
, With PersonAccess As
(
Select PersonId
From dbo.GetPersonAccess(1)
)
Select PersonId, Fullname
From QueryMembershipPerson As QMP
Join PersonAccess As PA
On PA.PersonId = QMP.PersonId
Yet another solution would be a derived table like so:
Select ...
From (
Select QM.PersonId, P.Fullname
From QueryMembership As qm
Join Person As P
On P.PersonId = QM.PersonId
Where QM.QueryId = 1234
) As QueryMembershipPerson
Join dbo.GetPersonAccess(1) As PA
On PA.PersonId = QueryMembershipPerson.PersonId
If pushing some of the query into a temp table and then joining on that works, I'd be surprised that you couldn't combine that concept into a CTE or a query with a derived table.

Slow query with left outer join and is null condition

I've got a simple query (postgresql if that matters) that retrieves all items for some_user excluding the ones she has on her wishlist:
select i.*
from core_item i
left outer join core_item_in_basket b on (i.id=b.item_id and b.user_id=__some_user__)
where b.on_wishlist is null;
The above query runs in ~50000ms (yep, the number is correct).
If I remove the "b.on_wishlist is null" condition or make it "b.on_wishlist is not null", the query runs in some 50ms (quite a change).
The query has more joins and conditions but this is irrelevant as only this one slows it down.
Some info on the database size:
core_items has ~ 10.000 records
core_user has ~5.000 records
core_item_in_basket has ~2.000
records (of which some 50% has
on_wishlist = true, the rest is null)
I don't have any indexes (except for ids and foreign keys) on those two tables.
The question is: what should I do to make this run faster? I've got a few ideas myself to check out this evening, but I'd like you guys to help if possible, as well.
Thanks!
try using not exists:
select i.*
from core_item i
where not exists (select * from core_item_in_basket b where i.id=b.item_id and b.user_id=__some_user__)
Sorry for adding 2nd answer, but stackoverflow doesn't let me format comments properly, and since formatting is essential, I have to post answer.
Couple of options:
CREATE INDEX q ON core_item_in_basket (user_id, item_id) WHERE on_wishlist is null;
same index, but change order of columns in it.
SELECT i.* FROM core_item i WHERE i.id not in (select item_id FROM core_item_in_basket WHERE on_wishlist is null AND user_id = __some_user__); (this query can benefit from index from point #1, but will not benefit from index #2.
SELECT * from core_item where id in (select id from core_item EXCEPT select item_id FROM core_item_in_basket WHERE on_wishlist is null AND user_id = __some_user__);
Let us know the results :)
You might want to explain more about the purpose of this query - as some techniques make and some don't make sense, depending on use case.
How often are you running it?
Is it run for only 1 user, or you run it for all users in some kind of loop?
Do: explain analyze and put the output on explain.depesz.com so you will see why it is so slow.
Have you tried adding an index on on_wishlist?
It seems that this column needs to be checked for every row in the query. If your tables are that big, this might have quite a significant impact on the query speed.
As you put the on_wishlist condition in the where clause, which will cause it (depending on the what the query planer decides) to be evaluated after the join has been performed, that comparison has to be done for potentially every row resulting from the join. Both the core_items and core_item_in_basket tables are pretty big, and you don't have an index for that column, so there is very little for the query optimizer to do, which probably leads to the excessive query time.
The size of core_user should have no influence (as it is not referenced in the query).