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“General Failure” and Query Store Compilation Times

Kendra Little warns us not to let a person named General Failure run your military:

This post demonstrates two related bugs with plan forcing in Query Store which increase the likelihood of slower query execution and application timeouts in SQL Server environments.

These bugs are most likely to impact you if:

  • You use the Automatic Plan Correction feature in SQL Server, which automatically forces query plans.
  • Anyone manually forces query plans with Query Store.
  • You have slow storage, which can increase your likelihood of having longer compilation times.

The General Purpose tier of Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database feature both slow storage and Automatic Plan Correction enabled by default. So, weirdly enough, your risks of suffering from this problem are high if you are an Azure SQL customer.

In the words of the great John Madden, that’s a heckuva bug.