Do linq generated queries get cached effectively by SQL Server 2008? - sql

Do linq generated queries get cached effectively by SQL Server 2008?
or is it better to use stored procedures with linq or what about a view and then using compiled linq queries... opinions?
cheers
emphasis here is on "effectively", and or is it better....
ie. views are cached well by sql server, and then using linq on the view....

On top of the answers already given according to Damien Guard there's a glitch in the LINQ to SQL and EF LINQ providers that fails to set the variable lengths consistently for queries involving string parameters.
http://damieng.com/blog/2009/12/13/sql-server-query-plan-cache
Apparently it's fixed in .NET 4.0.
In the past I've written stored proc's in place of LINQ queries, mainly for complex reporting-like queries rather than simple CRUD but only following profiling of my application.

L2S simply passes queries on to SQL Server 2008. So they will get cached, or not cached, like any other query submitted by any other process. The fact that a Linq query is compiled has no impact on how SQL Server processes the query.

Queries that LINQ generates are normal SQL queries like your own hand-crafted SQL queries, and they follow the same rules: if the query text is identical (down to the last comma and whitespace) than a query text before, chances are its query execution plan might have been cached and thus able to be reused.
The point is: the query text has to be absolutely identical - if even a single whitespace is different, SQL Server considers it a new query and thus will go through the full process of parsing, analysing, finding a query plan and executing it.
But basically, yes - queries sent off by LINQ will be cached and reused - if they meet those criteria!

Related

Moving from Oracle SQL to ANSI SQL pros and cons

I work in a project where the UI has direct access to the database through SQL code. The company has a framework where we create UI pages in xml and after that it is parsed and creates FLEX pages. If we want some data from the DB (Oracle) we add a sql query in the xml (instead of databinding with a datacontext object like we could do with WPF). If we want to add some logic, there is no code behind, we call store procedures. After we have the data we need the parser does the job.
The new requirements are to use the framework and create a new product that will be compatible with SQL Server and the thoughts are to start transforming the (Oracle)SQL queries to ANSI SQL.
Can somebody tell me the benefits and mainly the problems that we are going to face doing that?
Do you think there is a better way?
Note: The framework is really big and there are a lot of products built on that so managers are not keen to just throw it away(I tried but.. :))
Each dialect of SQL is different. You could use ANSI SQL but a) not all of ANSI SQL is implemented by most DBMS and b) most DBMS's have implementation-specific optimisations which will perform better for some cases.
So I'd say, don't go for ANSI SQL. It won't always work and sometimes it will work slower than taking advantage of a vendor's non-standard implementations.
Specifically, Oracle requires a StoredProcedure to return a REF_CURSOR from a stored procedure to fill a DataSet. SQL Server doesnt; the SP returns what the sp SELECTed. You're going to have to change your SP's to get rid of the returned REF_CURSOR.
Date handling is quite different: Oracle needs a to_date to turn a string into a date in where clauses etc; SQL Server just takes the string and converts it for you. And so on and so on. (I'm not at all sure what the ANSI Standard is, or even if it covers this!) To avoid changing your SQL you could add create SQL Server function called to_date, but this is now going to slow up your SQL.
If you have much PL/SQL in stored procedures, you have a big job converting it to T-SQL. They are quite different.
Good luck!

SQL Server Getting Parsed Query

I need to get each statement of given SQL Server stored procedure.
To achieve this, I generate execution plan XML and look for "StmtSimple" nodes in query.
This approach is quite slow for large procedures.
Is there any way that I can get every single statement of the procedure without generating XML execution plan?
When you have the text of a stored procedure, you can perform a full parse on it using the TransactSql ScriptDom. If you just want to get each statement, it's possible to do that using this method.
However, I'm not convinced that it would actually perform much better than using the method you are using now. It's just another option to try.
Edit -> The ScriptDom is part of the SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack, and is contained in the 'SqlDom.msi' install.

Same SQL Query Slower from NHibernate Application than SQL Studio?

Our application issues an NHibernate-generated SQL query. At application runtime, the query takes about 12 seconds to run against a SQL Server database. SQL Profiler shows over 500,000 reads.
However, if I capture the exact query text using SQL Profiler, and run it again from SQL Studio, it takes 5 seconds and shows less than 4,600 reads.
The query uses a couple of parameters whose values are supplied at the end of the SQL text, and I'd read a little about parameter sniffing and inefficient query plans, but I had thought that related to stored procedures. Maybe NHibernate holds the resultset open while it instantiates its entities, which could explain the longer duration, but what could explain the extra 494,000 "reads" for the same query as performed by NHibernate? (No additional queries appear in the SQL Profiler trace.)
The query is specified as a LINQ query using NHibernate 3.1's LINQ facility. I didn't include the query itself because it seems like a basic question of philosophy: what could explain such a dramatic difference?
In case it's pertinent, there also happens to be a varbinary(max) column in the results, but in our situation it always contains null.
Any insight is much appreciated!
Be sure to read: http://www.sommarskog.se/query-plan-mysteries.html
Same rules apply for procs and sp_executesql. A huge reason for shoddy plans can be passing in a nvarchar param for a varchar field, it causes index scans as opposed to seeks.
I very much doubt the output is affecting the perf here, it is likely to be an issue with one of the params sent in, or selectivity of underlying tables.
When testing your output from profiler, be sure to include sp_executesql and make sure your settings match (stuff like SET ARITHABORT), otherwise you will cause a new plan to be generated.
You can always dig up the shoddy plan from the execution cache via sys.dm_exec_query_stats

What is a dynamic SQL query, and when would I want to use one?

What is a dynamic SQL query, and when would I want to use one? I'm using SQL Server 2005.
Here's a few articles:
Introduction to Dynamic SQL
Dynamic SQL Beginner's Guide
From Introduction to Dynamic SQL:
Dynamic SQL is a term used to mean SQL code that is generated programatically (in part or fully) by your program before it is executed. As a result it is a very flexible and powerful tool. You can use dynamic SQL to accomplish tasks such as adding where clauses to a search based on what fields are filled out on a form or to create tables with varying names.
Dynamic SQL is SQL generated by the calling program. This can be through an ORM tool, or ad-hoc by concatenating strings. Non-dynamic SQL would be something like a stored procedure, where the SQL to be executed is predefined. Not all DBA's will let you run dynamic SQL against their database due to security concerns.
A dynamic SQL query is one that is built as the program is running as opposed to a query that is already (hard-) coded at compile time.
The program in question might be running either on the client or application server (debatable if you'd still call it 'dynamic') or within the database server.

Hibernate complex query

I am trying to execute a query against a MySQL database.
The query is fairly complex it has 5 inner joins, including 1 join to itself and
it returns 3 pieces of information from 2 different tables.
We are using hibernate and till now I have used it for simple queries only.
I have written the sql query and tested it too. I am wondering how to implement this using
hibernate, can I execute plain sql statements with hibernate? If so what do I need, a separate hbm.xml?
If I use hibernate and execute the plain sql query can I still utilize caching later on?
Yes, you can execute plain SQL queries with Hibernate.
No, you don't need a separate hbm.xml mapping file (unless you WANT to separate sql queries from the rest, in which case you can do so). You can map your named SQL query the same way you do with named HQL queries.
Whether you will be able to "utilize caching" depends on what exactly you understand by "caching" and how you're going to map your SQL query; it's impossible to answer without knowing more details.
All that said, you may not need to resort to SQL query; HQL is quite powerful and it may very well be possible (assuming appropriate mappings exist) to write your query as HQL. Can you post relevant mappings / schemas and your SQL query?
I strongly recommend criteria queries over HQL queries. They are much closer to your program code without sacrificing any expression power. They DO however depend on relations to be explicitly mapped, otherwise they get quite complicated.
To speed up development, set property hibernate.show_sql=true, and play with the system in the debugger, using the "reload modified class" and "drop stack frame" features of the IDE+jvm until the SQL emitted looks like the one you've posted.