Fine tuning a UPDATE query on a table - sql

I have 2 tables table1 and table2 both having large amounts of data, Table1 has 5 million and Table2 has 80,000 records. I am running an update,
Update Table1 a
Set
a.id1=(SELECT DISTINCT p.col21
FROM Table2 p
WHERE p.col21 = SUBSTR(a.id, 2, LENGTH(a.id));
The substr and distinct in the query are making it slow.
How can this query be re-written to speed up the process and
What columns do I need to index

May be a merge
merge into Table1 a
using Table2 p
on (p.col21 = SUBSTR(a.id, 2, LENGTH(a.id))
When matched then
update set a.id1 = p.col21;
and a Function Based Index on a.id.

I see that you are dynamically calculating:
p.col21=SUBSTR(a.id,2,LENGTH(a.id))
This will take some substantial time and make it impossible to create an index. Did you consider actually creating a column with that value? This would allow you to index on it and make it much faster. If the id is static this seems like an easy win.

How many rows does your subquery return, and how many rows are you updating? With a large number of updates, indexes may not help you out at all.

Related

Avoid multiple SELECT while updating a table's column relatively to another table's one

I am quite a newbie with SQL queries but I need to modify a column of a table relatively to the column of another table. For now I have the following query working:
UPDATE table1
SET date1=(
SELECT last_day(max(date2))+1
FROM table2
WHERE id=123
)
WHERE id=123
AND date1=to_date('31/12/9999', 'dd/mm/yyyy');
The problem with this structure is that, I suppose, the SELECT query will be executed for every line of the table1. So I tried to create another query but this one has a syntax error somewhere after the FROM keyword:
UPDATE t1
SET t1.date1=last_day(max(t2.date2))+1
FROM table1 t1
INNER JOIN table2 t2
ON t1.id=t2.id
WHERE t1.id=123
AND t1.date1=to_date('31/12/9999', 'dd/mm/yyyy');
AND besides that I don't even know if this one is faster than the first one...
Do you have any idea how I can handle this issue?
Thanks a lot!
Kind regards,
Julien
The first code you wrote is fine. It won't be executed for every line of the table1 as you fear. It will do the following:
it will run the subquery to find a value you want to use in your UPDATE statement, searching through table2, but as you have stated the exact id from
the table, it should be as fast as possible, as long as you have
created an index on that (I guess a primary key) column
it will run the outer query, finding the single row you want to update. As before, it should be as fast as possible as you have stated the exact id, as long as there is an index on that column
To summarize, If those ID's are unique, both your subquery and your query should return only one row and it should execute as fast as possible. If you think that execution is not fast enough (at least that it takes longer than the amount of data would justify) check if those columns have unique values and if they have unique indexes on them.
In fact, it would be best to add those indexes regardless of this problem, if they do not exist and if these columns have unique values, as it would drastically improve all of the performances on these tables that search through these id columns.
Please try to use MERGE
MERGE INTO (
SELECT id,
date1
FROM table1
WHERE date1 = to_date('31/12/9999', 'dd/mm/yyyy')
AND id = 123
) t1
USING (
SELECT id,
last_day(max(date2))+1 max_date
FROM table2
WHERE id=123
GROUP BY id
) t2 ON (t1.id = t2.id)
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE SET t1.date1 = t2.max_date
;

WHERE and JOIN order of operation

My question is similar to this SQL order of operations but with a little twist, so I think it's fair to ask.
I'm using Teradata. And I have 2 tables: table1, table2.
table1 has only an id column.
table2 has the following columns: id, val
I might be wrong but I think these two statements give the same results.
Statement 1.
SELECT table1.id, table2.val
FROM table1
INNER JOIN table2
ON table1.id = table2.id
WHERE table2.val<100
Statement 2.
SELECT table1.id, table3.val
FROM table1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT *
FROM table2
WHERE val<100
) table3
ON table1.id=table3.id
My questions is, will the query optimizer be smart enough to
- execute the WHERE clause first then JOIN later in Statement 1
- know that table 3 isn't actually needed in Statement 2
I'm pretty new to SQL, so please educate me if I'm misunderstanding anything.
this would depend on many many things (table size, index, key distribution, etc), you should just check the execution plan:
you don't say which database, but here are some ways:
MySql EXPLAIN
SQL Server SET SHOWPLAN_ALL (Transact-SQL)
Oracle EXPLAIN PLAN
what is explain in teradata?
Teradata Capture and compare plans faster with Visual Explain and XML plan logging
Depending on the availability of statistics and indexes for the tables in question the query rewrite mechanism in the optimizer will may or may not opt to scan Table2 for records where val < 100 before scanning Table1.
In certain situations, based on data demographics, joins, indexing and statistics you may find that the optimizer is not eliminating records in the query plan when you feel that it should. Even if you have a derived table such as the one in your example. You can force the optimizer to process a derived table by simply placing a GROUP BY in your derived table. The optimizer is then obligated to resolve the GROUP BY aggregate before it can consider resolving the join between the two tables in your example.
SELECT table1.id, table3.val
FROM table1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT table2.id, tabl2.val
FROM table2
WHERE val<100
GROUP BY 1,2
) table3
ON table1.id=table3.id
This is not to say that your standard approach should be to run with this through out your code. This is typically one of my last resorts when I have a query plan that simply doesn't eliminate extraneous records earlier enough in the plan and results in too much data being scanned and carried around through the various SPOOL files. This is simply a technique you can put in your toolkit to when you encounter such a situation.
The query rewrite mechanism is continually being updated from one release to the next and the details about how it works can be found in the SQL Transaction Processing Manual for Teradata 13.0.
Unless I'm missing something, Why do you even need Table1??
Just query Table2
Select id, val
From table2
WHERE val<100
or are you using the rows in table1 as a filter? i.e., Does table1 only copntain a subset of the Ids in Table2??
If so, then this will work as well ...
Select id, val
From table2
Where val<100
And id In (Select id
From table1)
But to answer your question, Yes the query optimizer should be intelligent enough to figure out the best order in which to execute the steps necessary to translate your logical instructions into a physical result. It uses the strored statistics that the database maintains on each table to determine what to do (what type of join logic to use for example), as wekll as what order to perform the operations in in order to minimize Disk IOs and processing costs.
Q1. execute the WHERE clause first then JOIN later in Statement 1
The thing is, if you switch the order of inner join, i.e. table2 INNER JOIN table1, then I guess WHERE clause can be processed before JOIN operation, during the preparation phase. However, I guess even if you don't change the original query, the optimizer should be able to switch their order, if it thinks the join operation will be too expensive with fetching the whole row, so it will apply WHERE first. Just my guess.
Q2. know that table 3 isn't actually needed in Statement 2
Teradata will interpret your second query in such way that the derived table is necessary, so it will keep processing table 3 involved operation.

Why is it that the IsEqual (=) operator is working faster than the IsNotEqual (<>) operator in Oracle?

Like the title says, if anyone has the answer I would like to know. I've been googling but couldn't find a straight answer.
Example:
This works
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Table1 TB1, Table2 TB2
WHERE TB1.Field1 = TB2.Table2
This seems to take hours
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Table1 TB1, Table2 TB2
WHERE TB1.Field1 <> TB2.Table2
Because they are different SQL sentences. In the first one, you are joining two tables using Field1 and Table2 fields. Probably returning a few records.
In the second one, your query is probably returning a lot of records, since you are doing a cross join, and a lot of rows will satisfy your Field1 <> Table2 condition.
A very simplified example
Table1
Field1
------
1
2
5
9
Table2
Table2
------
3
4
5
6
9
Query1 will return 2 since only 5 and 9 are common.
Query2 will return 18 since a lot of rows from cross join will count.
If you have table with a lot of records, it will take a while to process your second query.
It's important to realize that SQL is a declarative language and not an imperative one. You describe what conditions you want your data to fit and not how those comparisons should be executed. It's the job of the database to find the fastest way to give you an answer (a task taken over by the query optimizer). This means that a seemingly small change in your query can result in a wildly different query plan, which in turn results in a wildly different runtime behaviour.
The = comparison can be converted to and optimized the same way as a simple join on the two fields. This means that normal indices can be used to execute the query very fast, probably without reading the actual data and using only the indices instead.
A <> comparison on the other hand requires a full cartesian product to be calculated and checked for the condition, usually (there might be a way to optimize this with the correct index, but usually an index won't help here). It will also usually return a lot more results, which adds to the execution time.
Probably, the second query processes way more rows than the first one.
(Thinking back to a similar question)
Are you trying to count the rows in Table1 for which there is no matching record in Table2?
If so you could use this
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Table1 TB1
WHERE NOT EXISTS
(SELECT * FROM Table2 TB2
WHERE TB1.Field1 = TB2.Field2 )
or this for example
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM
(
SELECT Field1 FROM Table1
MINUS
SELECT Field2 FROM Table2
) T

Execute MySQL update query on 750k rows

I've added a field to a MySQL table. I need to populate the new column with the value from another table. Here is the query that I'd like to run:
UPDATE table1 t1
SET t1.user_id =
(
SELECT t2.user_id
FROM table2 t2
WHERE t2.usr_id = t1.usr_id
)
I ran that query locally on 239K rows and it took about 10 minutes. Before I do that on the live environment I wanted to ask if what I am doing looks ok i.e. does 10 minutes sound reasonable. Or should I do it another way, a php loop? a better query?
Use an UPDATE JOIN! This will provide you a native inner join to update from, rather than run the subquery for every bloody row. It tends to be much faster.
update table1 t1
inner join table2 t2 on
t1.usr_id = t2.usr_id
set t1.user_id = t2.user_id
Ensure that you have an index on each of the usr_id columns, too. That will speed things up quite a bit.
If you have some rows that don't match up, and you want to set t1.user_id = null, you will need to do a left join in lieu of an inner join. If the column is null already, and you're just looking to update it to the values in t2, use an inner join, since it's faster.
I should make mention, for posterity, that this is MySQL syntax only. The other RDBMS's have different ways of doing an update join.
There are two rather important pieces of information missing:
What type of tables are they?
What indexes exist on them?
If table2 has an index that contains user_id and usr_id as the first two columns and table1 is indexed on user_id, it shouldn't be that bad.
You don't have an index on t2.usr_id.
Create this index and run your query again, or a multiple-table UPDATE proposed by #Eric (with LEFT JOIN, of course).
Note that MySQL lacks other JOIN methods than NESTED LOOPS, so it's index that matters, not the UPDATE syntax.
However, the multiple table UPDATE is more readable.

SQL: Optimization problem, has rows?

I got a query with five joins on some rather large tables (largest table is 10 mil. records), and I want to know if rows exists. So far I've done this to check if rows exists:
SELECT TOP 1 tbl.Id
FROM table tbl
INNER JOIN ... ON ... = ... (x5)
WHERE tbl.xxx = ...
Using this query, in a stored procedure takes 22 seconds and I would like it to be close to "instant". Is this even possible? What can I do to speed it up?
I got indexes on the fields that I'm joining on and the fields in the WHERE clause.
Any ideas?
switch to EXISTS predicate. In general I have found it to be faster than selecting top 1 etc.
So you could write like this IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM table tbl INNER JOIN table tbl2 .. do your stuff
Depending on your RDBMS you can check what parts of the query are taking a long time and which indexes are being used (so you can know they're being used properly).
In MSSQL, you can use see a diagram of the execution path of any query you submit.
In Oracle and MySQL you can use the EXPLAIN keyword to get details about how the query is working.
But it might just be that 22 seconds is the best you can do with your query. We can't answer that, only the execution details provided by your RDBMS can. If you tell us which RDBMS you're using we can tell you how to find the information you need to see what the bottleneck is.
4 options
Try COUNT(*) in place of TOP 1 tbl.id
An index per column may not be good enough: you may need to use composite indexes
Are you on SQL Server 2005? If som, you can find missing indexes. Or try the database tuning advisor
Also, it's possible that you don't need 5 joins.
Assuming parent-child-grandchild etc, then grandchild rows can't exist without the parent rows (assuming you have foreign keys)
So your query could become
SELECT TOP 1
tbl.Id --or count(*)
FROM
grandchildtable tbl
INNER JOIN
anothertable ON ... = ...
WHERE
tbl.xxx = ...
Try EXISTS.
For either for 5 tables or for assumed heirarchy
SELECT TOP 1 --or count(*)
tbl.Id
FROM
grandchildtable tbl
WHERE
tbl.xxx = ...
AND
EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM
anothertable T2
WHERE
tbl.key = T2.key /* AND T2 condition*/)
-- or
SELECT TOP 1 --or count(*)
tbl.Id
FROM
mytable tbl
WHERE
tbl.xxx = ...
AND
EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM
anothertable T2
WHERE
tbl.key = T2.key /* AND T2 condition*/)
AND
EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM
yetanothertable T3
WHERE
tbl.key = T3.key /* AND T3 condition*/)
Doing a filter early on your first select will help if you can do it; as you filter the data in the first instance all the joins will join on reduced data.
Select top 1 tbl.id
From
(
Select top 1 * from
table tbl1
Where Key = Key
) tbl1
inner join ...
After that you will likely need to provide more of the query to understand how it works.
Maybe you could offload/cache this fact-finding mission. Like if it doesn't need to be done dynamically or at runtime, just cache the result into a much smaller table and then query that. Also, make sure all the tables you're querying to have the appropriate clustered index. Granted you may be using these tables for other types of queries, but for the absolute fastest way to go, you can tune all your clustered indexes for this one query.
Edit: Yes, what other people said. Measure, measure, measure! Your query plan estimate can show you what your bottleneck is.
Use the maximun row table first in every join and if more than one condition use
in where then sequence of the where is condition is important use the condition
which give you maximum rows.
use filters very carefully for optimizing Query.