I've an SQL database to contain stock bars downloaded from Yahoo!. I'm trying to create some indicators to analyze these stocks (i.e. Simple Moving Average). I am concerned with the performances of my query, which is simply UPDATE #stockname SET SMA = #value WHERE id = #n . To update 2000 rows it takes 2 minutes. I tried with a stored procedure but the result is almost the same.
for (int i = 0; i < closing_prices.Count - length; i++)
{
double signalValue signalValue = Selector.SignalProcessor(Signal,
closing_prices.GetRange(i, length), length);
//Write the value into the database
string location = Convert.ToString(i + length + 1);
this.UpdateWithSingleCondition("_" + Instrument, columnName,
signalValue.ToString(), "id", location, "=", sql_Connection);
}
This cycle calls the stored procedure to update the column SMA each time a new value is generated. Is there any possibility to put directly the entire column into the database? I think this can save time. Anyway updating 500 rows in 2 min sounds very slow.
Could you tell me how to improve the execution time of my query?
Instead of writing values out one at a time, perhaps you could use a stored proc with table valued parameters to ship the data from your app to the DB in a single op then MERGE the data into your table, saving on a lot of round-tripping.
Analyze your performance. You must have SOME bottleneck. Your update count is really low. You should easily be able to do 10-30 updates per second which would translate to a lot more in 2 minutes.... and that is on a stock computer, not even one worth a database (which would mean many fast discs).
Do a performance analysis on sql server and find out your bottlenecks. You have all indices needed?
I would create a stored proc that receives a string. This string is an XML or delimeted string.
Then use one of the many string to table functions floating around
(delimeted string) http://blogs.x2line.com/al/articles/150.aspx
(xml) http://kennyshu.blogspot.com/2007/12/convert-xml-file-to-table-in-sql-2005.html
and convert the string into a temp table.
Then perform a insert from the temp to the destination table.
This way you make one call to the DB server and avoid chatter. Its a LOT faster than multiple calls.
Avoid table parameters since you cant call em from code.
First disable external key constrains. then enable them again:
To disable "ALTER TABLE" "WITH NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL"
To anable them, use "ALTER TABLE" together with "WITH CHECK
CONSTRAINT ALL".
Related
I'm completely new to Visual FoxPro (9.0) and I was having trouble with creating a table which uses previous values to generate new values. What I mean by this is I have a given table that is two columns, age and probability of death. Using this I need to create a survival table which has the columns Age, l(x), d(x), q(x), m(x), L(x), T(x), and q(x) Where:
l(x): Survivorship Function; Defined as l(x+1) = l(x) * EXP(-m(x))
d(x): Number of Deaths; Defined as l(x) - l(x+1)
q(x): Probability of Death; This is given to me already
m(x): Mortality Rate; Defined as -LN(1-q(x))
L(x): Total Person-Years of Cohorts in the Interval (x, x+1); Defined as l(x+1) + (0.5 * d(x))
T(X): Total Person-Years of all Cohorts in the Interval (x, N); Defined as SUM(L(x)) [From x, N]
e(x): Remaining Life Expectancy; Defined as T(x) / l(x)
Now I'm not asking how to get all of these values, I just need help getting started and maybe pointed in the right direction. As far as I can tell, in VFP there is no way to point to a specific row in a data-table, so I can't do what I normally do in R and just make a loop. I.E. I can't do something like:
for (i in 1:length(given_table$Age))
{
new_table$mort_rate[i] <- -LN(1-given_table$death_prop[i])
}
It's been a little while so I'm not sure that's 100% correct anyway, but my point is I'm used to being able to create a table, and alter the values individually by pointing to a specific row and/or column using a loop with a simple counter variable. However, from what I've read there doesn't seem to be a way to do this in VFP, and I'm completely lost.
I've tried to make a Cursor, populating it with dummy values and trying to update each value sequentially using a SCATTER NAME and SCAN/REPLACE thing, but I don't really understand what's happening or how to fine tune this each calculation/entry that I need. (This is the post I was referencing when I tried this: Multiply and subtract values in previous row for new row in FoxPro.
So, how do I go about making a table that relies on iterative process to calculate subsequent values in Visual FoxPro? Are there any good resources that explain Cursors and the Scatter/Scan thing that I was trying (I couldn't find any resources that explained it in terms I could understand)?
Sorry if I've worded things poorly, I'm fairly new to programming in general. Thank you.
You absolutely can write a loop through an existing table in VFP. Use the SCAN command. However, if you're planning to add records to the same table as you go, you're going to run into some issues. Is that what you meant here? If so, my suggestion is to put the new records into a cursor as you create them and then APPEND them to the original table after you've processed all the records that were there when you started.
If you're putting records into a different table as you loop through the original, this is straightforward:
* Assumes you've already created the table or cursor to hold the result
SELECT YourOriginalTable && substitute in the alias/name for the original table
SCAN
* Do your calculations
* Substitute appropriately for YourNewTable and the two lists
INSERT INTO YourNewTable (<list of fields>) VALUES (<list of values>)
ENDSCAN
In the INSERT command, if you refer to any fields of the original table, you need to alias them, like this: YourOriginalTable.YourField, again substituting appropriately.
A bit too late but maybe still helps.
The steps to achieve what you want are:
0. close the tables - just in case (see CLOSE DATABASE)
open the Age table (see USE in VFP help)
create the Survival table structure (see CREATE TABLE)
for this you need to know the field type for each of your l(x), d(x), etc functions
Lets say that you named the fields like your functions (i.e. Lx,Dx, etc)
select the Age table (see SELECT)
loop through Age table (see SCAN)
pass each record into variables (see SCATTER)
made your calculations starting from the Age table data (variables) using L(x),D(x),etc formulas and store it into variables named as M.Your Survival Table Field
i.e. M.mx = -LOG(1-m.Age) && see LOG
Note: in these calculations you can use any mix of Age table variables and the new created variables.
after you calculated all the fields from Survival write it into table (see APPEND && GATHER commands)
close the tables (see CLOSE DATABASE)
How to store, retrieve and update a sequence number in a single row of a table with a schema like:
ID (int)
LookUp(varchar)
SeqNum(int) --business logic dictates the SeqNum is constrained to a particular range, say 1300 to 7600
To me this looks like the clickercounter guy at a ball park using a clicker to ticks one off for each person that goes by. I want each person to have a unique number. I want multiple clickercounter people to use the same clicker and I don't want any missed values.
So far my approaches have either resulted in a deadlock condition leaving the table inaccessible or me scratching my head wondering about how to structure a stored procedure that calls a stored procedure that has a transaction to lock the record, read it, update it, commit the transaction, and unlock the record
In pseudo code I tried something like
From within a stored procedure:
Call getnum stored procedure
sproc getnum
begin trans
select current seqnum into a variable from Seqtbl where lookupval = 'nosebleed'
update Seqtbl.seqnum++ where lookupval = 'nosebleed'
end trans
I thought of adding a bool column bLock and then having the getnum stored procedure check if the value = false then update the lock (bLock=true) followed by a read, update, and update the lock (bLock = false) without using a transaction. But I am not convinced that ill conceived timing of multiple processes could not interfere with each other.
I do see others using identity columns to achieve similar solutions but it seems that these approaches require one table per LookUp (from the sample schema above) value.
Does anyone suggestions, strategies used to solve similar problems, guidance, or links to send me to school on the important aspects of SQL Server needed to understand a solution to this scenario?
You should get rid of deadlocks if you use just single stament:
declare #id int
update Seqtbl
set #id = seqnum, seqnum = seqnum + 1
where lookupval = 'nosebleed'
The bigger problem here is that you said that there cannot be holes in the sequence. If your actual transaction can be rolled back, then you'll have to include the sequence fetching to the same transaction to be rolled back as well and that's probably going to cause you a lot of blocking, depending on how much many calls there are.
If you're using SQL Server 2012 or newer, you should also look into sequence object, but that's not going to solve the issue with missing values either.
This is a bit long for a comment.
Why are you using a sequence for this? Your analogy to the click-counter "guy" would not suggest a sequence or identity value. Instead, it would suggest inserting the click with an identity column and/or precise creation date. A query can then be used to assign a sequential value when you need it:
select t.*, row_number() over (order by id)
from table t;
You can then use arithmetic to get the value in the range that you want.
I'm working to update a stored procedure that current selects up to n rows, if the rows returned = n, does a select count without the limit, and then returns the original select and the total impacted rows.
Kinda like:
SELECT TOP (#rowsToReturn)
A.data1,
A.data2
FROM
mytable A
SET #maxRows = ##ROWCOUNT
IF #rowsToReturn = ##ROWCOUNT
BEGIN
SET #maxRows = (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM mytableA)
END
I'm wanting reduce this to a single select statement. Based on this question, COUNT(*) OVER() allows this, but it is put on every single row instead of in an output parameter. Maybe something like FOUND_ROWS() in MYSQL, such as a ##TOTALROWCOUNT or such.
As a side note, since the actual select has an order by, the data base will need to already traverse the entire set (to make sure that it gets the correct first n ordered records), so the database should already have this count somewhere.
As #MartinSmith mentioned in a comment on this question, there is no direct (i.e. pure T-SQL) way of getting the total numbers of rows that would be returned while at the same time limiting it. In the past I have done the method of:
dump the query to a temp table to grab ##ROWCOUNT (the total set)
use ROW_NUBMER() AS [ResultID] on the ordered results of the main query
SELECT TOP (n) FROM #Temp ORDER BY [ResultID] or something similar
Of course, the downside here is that you have the disk I/O cost of getting those records into the temp table. Put [tempdb] on SSD? :)
I have also experienced the "run COUNT(*) with the same rest of the query first, then run the regular SELECT" method (as advocated by #Blam), and it is not a "free" re-run of the query:
It is a full re-run in many cases. The issue is that when doing COUNT(*) (hence not returning any fields), the optimizer only needs to worry about indexes in terms of the JOIN, WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY clauses. But when you want some actual data back, that could change the execution plan quite a bit, especially if the indexes used to get the COUNT(*) are not "covering" for the fields in the SELECT list.
The other issue is that even if the indexes are all the same and hence all of the data pages are still in cache, that just saves you from the physical reads. But you still have the logical reads.
I'm not saying this method doesn't work, but I think the method in the Question that only does the COUNT(*) conditionally is far less stressful on the system.
The method advocated by #Gordon is actually functionally very similar to the temp table method I described above: it dumps the full result set to [tempdb] (the INSERTED table is in [tempdb]) to get the full ##ROWCOUNT and then it gets a subset. On the downside, the INSTEAD OF TRIGGER method is:
a lot more work to set up (as in 10x - 20x more): you need a real table to represent each distinct result set, you need a trigger, the trigger needs to either be built dynamically, or get the number of rows to return from some config table, or I suppose it could get it from CONTEXT_INFO() or a temp table. Still, the whole process is quite a few steps and convoluted.
very inefficient: first it does the same amount of work dumping the full result set to a table (i.e. into the INSERTED table--which lives in [tempdb]) but then it does an additional step of selecting the desired subset of records (not really a problem as this should still be in the buffer pool) to go back into the real table. What's worse is that second step is actually double I/O as the operation is also represented in the transaction log for the database where that real table exists. But wait, there's more: what about the next run of the query? You need to clear out this real table. Whether via DELETE or TRUNCATE TABLE, it is another operation that shows up (the amount of representation based on which of those two operations is used) in the transaction log, plus is additional time spent on the additional operation. AND, let's not forget about the step that selects the subset out of INSERTED into the real table: it doesn't have the opportunity to use an index since you can't index the INSERTED and DELETED tables. Not that you always would want to add an index to the temp table, but sometimes it helps (depending on the situation) and you at least have that choice.
overly complicated: what happens when two processes need to run the query at the same time? If they are sharing the same real table to dump into and then select out of for the final output, then there needs to be another column added to distinguish between the SPIDs. It could be ##SPID. Or it could be a GUID created before the initial INSERT into the real table is called (so that it can be passed to the INSTEAD OF trigger via CONTEXT_INFO() or a temp table). Whatever the value is, it would then be used to do the DELETE operation once the final output has been selected. And if not obvious, this part influences a performance issue brought up in the prior bullet: TRUNCATE TABLE cannot be used as it clears the entire table, leaving DELETE FROM dbo.RealTable WHERE ProcessID = #WhateverID; as the only option.
Now, to be fair, it is possible to do the final SELECT from within the trigger itself. This would reduce some of the inefficiency as the data never makes it into the real table and then also never needs to be deleted. It also reduces the over-complication as there should be no need to separate the data by SPID. However, this is a very time-limited solution as the ability to return results from within a trigger is going bye-bye in the next release of SQL Server, so sayeth the MSDN page for the disallow results from triggers Server Configuration Option:
This feature will be removed in the next version of Microsoft SQL Server. Do not use this feature in new development work, and modify applications that currently use this feature as soon as possible. We recommend that you set this value to 1.
The only actual way to do:
the query one time
get a subset of rows
and still get the total row count of the full result set
is to use .Net. If the procs are being called from app code, please see "EDIT 2" at the bottom. If you want to be able to randomly run various stored procedures via ad hoc queries, then it would have to be a SQLCLR stored procedure so that it could be generic and work for any query as stored procedures can return dynamic result sets and functions cannot. The proc would need at least 3 parameters:
#QueryToExec NVARCHAR(MAX)
#RowsToReturn INT
#TotalRows INT OUTPUT
The idea is to use "Context Connection = true;" to make use of the internal / in-process connection. You then do these basic steps:
call ExecuteDataReader()
before you read any rows, do a GetSchemaTable()
from the SchemaTable you get the result set field names and datatypes
from the result set structure you construct a SqlDataRecord
with that SqlDataRecord you call SqlContext.Pipe.SendResultsStart(_DataRecord)
now you start calling Reader.Read()
for each row you call:
Reader.GetValues()
DataRecord.SetValues()
SqlContext.Pipe.SendResultRow(_DataRecord)
RowCounter++
Rather than doing the typical "while (Reader.Read())", you instead include the #RowsToReturn param: while(Reader.Read() && RowCounter < RowsToReturn.Value)
After that while loop, call SqlContext.Pipe.SendResultsEnd() to close the result set (the one that you are sending, not the one you are reading)
then do a second while loop that cycles through the rest of the result, but never gets any of the fields:
while (Reader.Read())
{
RowCounter++;
}
then just set TotalRows = RowCounter; which will pass back the number of rows for the full result set, even though you only returned the top n rows of it :)
Not sure how this performs against the temp table method, the dual call method, or even #M.Ali's method (which I have also tried and kinda like, but the question was specific to not sending the value as a column), but it should be fine and does accomplish the task as requested.
EDIT:
Even better! Another option (a variation on the above C# suggestion) is to use the ##ROWCOUNT from the T-SQL stored procedure, sent as an OUTPUT parameter, rather than cycling through the rest of the rows in the SqlDataReader. So the stored procedure would be similar to:
CREATE PROCEDURE SchemaName.ProcName
(
#Param1 INT,
#Param2 VARCHAR(05),
#RowCount INT OUTPUT = -1 -- default so it doesn't have to be passed in
)
AS
SET NOCOUNT ON;
{any ol' query}
SET #RowCount = ##ROWCOUNT;
Then, in the app code, create a new SqlParameter, Direction = Output, for "#RowCount". The numbered steps above stay the same, except the last two (10 and 11), which change to:
Instead of the 2nd while loop, just call Reader.Close()
Instead of using the RowCounter variable, set TotalRows = (int)RowCountOutputParam.Value;
I have tried this and it does work. But so far I have not had time to test the performance against the other methods.
EDIT 2:
If the T-SQL stored procs are being called from the app layer (i.e. no need for ad hoc execution) then this is actually a much simpler variation of the above C# methods. In this case you don't need to worry about the SqlDataRecord or the SqlContext.Pipe methods. Assuming you already have a SqlDataReader set up to pull back the results, you just need to:
Make sure the T-SQL stored proc has a #RowCount INT OUTPUT = -1 parameter
Make sure to SET #RowCount = ##ROWCOUNT; immediately after the query
Register the OUTPUT param as a SqlParameter having Direction = Output
Use a loop similar to: while(Reader.Read() && RowCounter < RowsToReturn) so that you can stop retrieving results once you have pulled back the desired amount.
Remember to not limit the result in the stored proc (i.e. no TOP (n))
At that point, just like what was mentioned in the first "EDIT" above, just close the SqlDataReader and grab the .Value of the OUTPUT param :).
How about this....
DECLARE #N INT = 10
;WITH CTE AS
(
SELECT
A.data1,
A.data2
FROM mytable A
)
SELECT TOP (#N) * , (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM CTE) Total_Rows
FROM CTE
The last column will be populated with the total number of rows it would have returned without the TOP Clause.
The issue with your requirement is, you are expecting a SINGLE select statement to return a table and also a scalar value. which is not possible.
A Single select statement will return a table or a scalar value. OR you can have two separate selects one returning a Scalar value and other returning a scalar. Choice is yours :)
Just because you think TSQL should have a row count because of a sort doe not mean it does. And if it does it does it is not currently sharing it with the outside world.
What you are missing is this is very efficient
select count(*)
from ...
where ...
select top x
from ...
where ...
order by ...
With the count(*) unless the query is just plain ugly those indexes should be in memory.
It has to perform a count to sort based on what?
Did you actually evaluate any query plans?
If TSQL has to perform a sort then explain the following.
Why is the count(*) 100% of the cost when the second had to do a count anyway?
Just where in that second query plan is there a free opportunity to count?
Why are those query plans so different if they both need to count?
I think there is an arcane way to do what you want. It involves triggers and non-temporary tables. And, I should mention, although I have implemented each piece (for different purposes), I have never put them together for this purpose.
The idea starts with this Stack Overflow question. According to this source, ##ROWCOUNT counts the number of attempted inserts, even when they don't really happen. Now, I must admit that a perusal of available documentation doesn't seem to touch on this topic, so this may or may not be "correct" behavior. This method is relying on this "problem".
So, you could do what you want by:
Creating a new table for the output -- but not a table variable or a temporary table.
Creating an "instead of" trigger that prevents more than #maxRows from going into the table.
Select the query results into the table.
Read ##ROWCOUNT after the select.
Note that you can create the table and trigger using dynamic SQL. You could also create it once, and have the trigger read the #maxRows value from some sort of parameter table. As mentioned before, this needs to be a real table that supports triggers.
I am reading and validating large fixed-width text files (range from 10-50K lines) that are submitted via our ASP.net website (coded in VB.Net). I do an initial scan of the file to check for basic issues (line length, etc). Then I import each row into a MS SQL table. Each DB rows basically consists of a record_ID (Primary, auto-incrementing) and about 50 varchar fields.
After the insert is done, I run a validation function on the file that checks each field in each row based on a bunch of criteria (trimmed length, isnumeric, range checks, etc). If it finds an error in any field, it inserts a record into the Errors table, which has an error_ID, the record_ID and an error message. In addition, if the field fails in a particular way, I have to do a "reset" on that field. A reset might consist of blanking the entire field, or simply replacing the value with another value (e.g. replacing the string with a new one that has all illegals chars taken out).
I have a 5,000 line test file. The upload, initial check, and import takes about 5-6 seconds. The detailed error check and insert into the Errors table takes about 5-8 seconds (this file has about 1200 errors in it). However, the "resets" part takes about 40-45 seconds for 750 fields that need to be reset. When I comment out the resets function (returning immediately without actually calling the UPDATE stored proc), the process is very fast. With the resets turned on, the pages take 50 seconds to return.
My UPDATE stored proc is using some recommended code from http://sommarskog.se/dynamic_sql.html, whereby it uses CASE instead of dynamic SQL:
UPDATE dbo.Records
SET dbo.Records.file_ID = CASE #field_name WHEN 'file_ID' THEN #field_value ELSE file_ID END,
.
. (all 50 varchar field CASE statements here)
.
WHERE dbo.Records.record_ID = #record_ID
Is there any way I can help my performance here. Can I somehow group all of these UPDATE calls into a single transaction? Should I be reworking the UPDATE query somehow? Or is it just sheer quantity of 750+ UPDATEs and things are just slow (it's a quad proc server with 8GB ram).
Any suggestions appreciated.
Don't do this in sql; fix the data up in code, then do you updates.
If you have sql 2008, then look into table-value parameters. It enables you to pass an entire table as a parameter to a s'proc. From their you just have the one insert/update or merge statement
If your looping through the lines and doing individual updates/inserts this can be really expensive... Consider using SqlBulkCopy which can speed up all your inserts. Similarly, you can create a DataSet, make your updates on the dataset and then submit them all in one shot through a SqlDataAdapter.
I believe you are doing 50 case statements on every update. Sounds like that would be slow.
It is possible to solve this problem with inject proof code via parameterized querys and a string constant table.
Quick and dirty example code.
string [] queryList = { "UPDATE records SET col1 = {val} WHERE ID={key}",
"UPDATE records SET col2 = {val} WHERE ID={key}",
"UPDATE records SET col3 = {val} WHERE ID={key}",
...
"UPDATE records SET col50 = {val} WHERE ID={key}"}
Then in your call to SQL you just pick the item in the array corresponding to the col you want to update and set the value and key for the parameterized items.
I'm guessing you will see a significant improvement... let me know how it goes.
Um. Why are you inserting numeric data into VARCHAR fields then trying to run numeric checks on it? This is yucky.
Apply correct data typing and constraints to your table, do the INSERT, and see if it failed. SQL Server will happily report errors back to you.
I would try changing the recovery model to simple and look at my indexes. Kimberly Tripp did a session showing a scenario with improved performance using a heap.
I have a script that updates itself every week. I've got a warning from my hosting that I've been overloading the server with the script. The problem, I've gathered is that I use too many UPDATE queries (one for each of my 8000+ users).
It's bad coding, I know. So now I need to lump all the data into one SQL query and update it all at once. I hope that is what will fix my problem.
A quick question. If I add purely add UPDATE queries separated by a semicolon like this:
UPDATE table SET something=3 WHERE id=8; UPDATE table SET something=6 WHERE id=9;
And then update the database with one large SQL code as opposed to querying the database for each update, it will be faster right?
Is this the best way to "bunch" together UPDATE statements? Would this significantly reduce server load?
Make a delimited file with your values and use your equivalent of MySQL's LOAD DATA INFILE. This will be significantly faster than an UPDATE.
LOAD DATA INFILE '/path/to/myfile'
REPLACE INTO TABLE thetable(field1,field2, field3)
//optional field and line delimiters
;
Your best bet is to batch these statements by your "something" field:
UPDATE table SET something=3 WHERE id IN (2,4,6,8)
UPDATE table SET something=4 WHERE id IN (1,3,5,7)
Of course, knowing nothing about your requirements, there is likely a better solution out there...
It will improve IO since there is only one round trip, but the database "effort" will be the same.
A curiosity of SQL is that the following integer expression
(1 -abs(sign(A - B))) = 1 if A == B and 0 otherwise. For convenience lets call this expression _eq(A,B).
So
update table set something = 3*_eq(id,8) + 6* _eq(id,9)
where id in (8,9);
will do what you want with a single update statement.