Category: Query Tuning

Minor Differences Between Plan Cache And Query Store Plans

Published 2018-11-20 by Kevin Feasel

Grant Fritchey shows us some minor differences between what the Query Store shows for a particular execution plan versus what exists in the plan cache:

As you can see, while the structure of the plans are identical, not everything is. The Compile values are different (although sometimes, they’ll be the same, that one is kind of luck of the draw to a degree) because they were compiled at different times with varying load on the system, so certainly that will be reflected. However, the other differences are also interesting. Which of the plans was retrieved from cache for example and, more importantly, the statement for the plans. The one on the left is the plan from the Query Store. It was not retrieved from cache and, the statement is for the query, not the stored procedure. Meanwhile, the plan on the right is from cache and, it’s based on the plan handle from the stored procedure, so it reflects that in the Statement value.

Click through for the full set of differences as well as Grant’s explanation.

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Deep Dive On Index Spools

Published 2018-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Hugo Kornelis takes a look at index spools:

The Index Spool operator is one of the four spool operators that SQL Server supports. It retains a copy of all data it reads in an indexed worktable (in tempdb), and can then later return subsets of these rows without having to call its child operators to produce them again.

The Index Spool operator is quite similar to Table Spool, except that Index Spool indexes its data, giving it the option to return a subset, and Index Spool lacks the option to read data from a spool created by another operator. The other two spool operators are quite different: Row Count Spool is optimized for specific cases where the rows to be returned are empty, and Window Spool is used to support the ROWS and RANGE specifications of windowing functions.

Eager and Lazy Spool operators rank high on my list of “troublesome when I see them” operators. The reason is not so much that eager or lazy spools are inherently bad—they’re not, as they are efficient ways to perform a particular query given the constraints of that query—but if I see one of them in conjunction with a slowly-performing query, it’s a good sign that I want to optimize away the need for spooling.

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Using Query Store To Diagnose Implicit Conversion Issues

Published 2018-11-16 by Kevin Feasel

Tom Norman shares a case study of using Query Store to fix a nasty implicit conversion problem:

A while ago, we contracted with a third party to start using their software and database with our product. We put the database in Azure but within a year, the database grew to over 250 gigs and we had to keep raising the Azure SQL Database to handle performance issues. Due to the cost of Azure, a decision was made to bring the database back on-premise. Before putting the database on the on-premise SQL Server, the server was running with eight CPUs. In production, we are running SQL Server 2016 Enterprise Edition. When we put the vendor database into production, we had to dramatically increase our CPUs in production, ending up with twenty-eight CPUs. Even with twenty-eight CPUs, during most of the production day, CPUs were running persistently at seventy-five percent. But why?

Tom takes us from symptom (high CPU utilization) to diagnosis and is able to provide the third-party vendor enough information to improve their product.

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Digging Into Batch Mode And Parameter Sniffing

Published 2018-10-26 by Kevin Feasel

Erik Darling has mixed news on the efficacy of using batch mode for rowstore as a way of eliminating problems arising from parameter sniffing:

SQL Server 2019 introduced batch mode over row store, which allows for batch mode processing to kick in on queries when the optimizer deems it cost effective to do so, and also to open up row store queries to the possibility of Adaptive Joins, and Memory Grant Feedback.

These optimizer tricks have the potential to help with parameter sniffing, since the optimizer can change its mind about join strategies at run time, and adjust memory grant issues between query executions.

But of course, the plan that compiles initially has to qualify to begin with. In a way, that just makes parameter sniffing even more frustrating.

Read on for both the good and the bad.

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Understanding Query Optimizer Timeouts

Published 2018-10-24 by Kevin Feasel

Joseph Pilov answers frequently asked questions about SQL Server’s query optimizer when it times out:

What Is Optimizer Timeout?

SQL Server uses a cost-based query optimizer. Therefore, it selects a query plan with the lowest cost after it has built and examined multiple query plans. One of the objectives of the SQL Server query optimizer (QO) is to spend a “reasonable time” in query optimization as compared to query execution. Therefore, QO has a built-in threshold of tasks to consider before it stops the optimization process. If this threshold is reached before QO has considered most, if not all, possible plans then it has reached the Optimizer TimeOut limit. An event is reported in the query plan as Time Out under “Reason For Early Termination of Statement Optimization.” It’s important to understand that this threshold isn’t based on clock time but on number of possibilities considered. In current SQL QO versions, over a half million possibilities are considered before a time out is reached.

Optimizer timeout is designed in Microsoft SQL Server and in many cases encountering it is not a factor affecting query performance. However, in some cases the SQL query plan choice may be affected by optimizer timeout and thus performance could be impacted. When you encounter such issues, if you understand optimizer timeout mechanism and how complex queries can be affected in SQL Server, it can help you to better troubleshoot and improve your performance issue.

Read the whole thing.

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Risks Of Using Resource Governor To Set Max DOP

Published 2018-10-11 by Kevin Feasel

Joe Obbish builds an example where Resource Governor’s CPU cap can actively harm query performance:

I uploaded the query plan here if you want to look at it. This type of scenario can happen even without Resource Governor. For example, a compiled parallel query may be downgraded all the way to MAXDOP 1 if it can’t get enough parallel threads.

The query performs significantly worse than before, which hopefully is not a surprise. A single execution took 12860 ms of CPU time and 13078 ms of elapsed time. Nearly all of the query’s time is spent on the hash join for the index intersection, with a tempdb spill and the processing of additional rows both playing a role. The tempdb spill occurs because SQL Server expected the build side of the hash join to be reduced to 1213170 rows. The bitmap filtering does not occur so 8 million rows were sent to the build side instead.

Read the whole thing.

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When Table Variables Have Realistic Estimates, Unrealistic Results May Occur

Published 2018-10-09 by Kevin Feasel

Milos Radivojevic wraps up a series on deferred compilation for table variables by looking at a hack which used to work but no longer does:

With this change, the query is executed very fast, with the appropriate execution plan:

SQL Server Execution Times: CPU time = 31 ms, elapsed time = 197 ms.

However, the LOOP hint does not affect estimations and the optimizer decisions related to them; it just replaces join operators chosen by the optimizer by Nested Loop Joins specified in the hint. SQL Server still expects billions of rows, and therefore the query got more than 2 GB memory grant for sorting data, although only 3.222 rows need to be sorted. The hint helped optimizer to produce a good execution plan (which is great; otherwise this query would take very long and probably will not be finished at all), but high memory grant issue is not solved.

As you might guess, now it’s time for table variables.

This is an interesting article with workarounds and counter-workarounds to solve a nasty estimation problem.

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Parameter Sniffing Issues With Table Variables

Published 2018-10-08 by Kevin Feasel

Milos Radivojevic points out the downside to table variable deferred compilation in SQL Server 2019:

Since the actual number of rows is significantly greater than in the call with the parameter ‘White’, you can see here sort warnings because this time 1MB of memory grant was not sufficient for sorting. But, the execution plan is exactly the same as for the first call.

Prior to SQL Server 2019, the execution plan for the second query in this stored procedure was always the same, regardless of parameter used for the first invocation and thus plan generation. Since the table variable has cardinality of 1, all estimations and the execution plan will be the same. We can say, using a table variable in this stored procedure and passing it to the second query neutralizes parameter sniffing effect. That does not mean, this is good or bad for all executions (you saw sort warnings and they are always bad), but the plan was stable, it did not change even after failover or clearing cache. If you call this stored procedure usually with high selective parameters, you can consider this plan as a good plan.

In SQL Server 2019, since table variable could have different cardinality, this stored procedure is prone to parameter sniffing and depending on the first execution parameter, you can have different execution plans:

This is a natural outcome and something we’d work with just like we would with a temp table or regular table in a stored procedure.

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Enhancements To Actual Query Plans In SSMS 18

Published 2018-10-05 by Kevin Feasel

Brent Ozar points out a big enhancement to the way SQL Server Management Studio views actual query plans:

You can see the estimated and actual number of rows right there on the query plan just like live query plans! You no longer have to waste hours of your life hovering over different parts of the query plan in order to see where the estimated row counts veer off from the actual row counts.

This doesn’t require SQL Server 2019, either.

Read on for Brent’s thoughts on the matter.

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Forcing A Plan Is A Temporary Solution

Published 2018-10-04 by Kevin Feasel

Erin Stellato explains when she forces plans—and that this is not a permanent solution to a performance problem:

Whether you force plans manually, or let SQL Server force them with the Automatic Plan Correction feature, I still view plan forcing as a temporary solution. I don’t expect you to have plans forced for years, let alone months. The life of a forced plan will, of course, depend on how quickly code and schema changes are ported to production. If you go the “set it and forget it route”, theoretically a manually forced plan could get used for a very long time. In that scenario, it’s your responsibility to periodically check to ensure that plan is still the “best” one for the query. I would be checking every couple weeks; once a month at most. Whether or not the plan remains optimal depends on the tables involved in the query, the data in the tables, how that data changes (if it changes), other schema changes that may be introduced, and more.

Further, you don’t want to ignore forced plans because there are cases where a forced plan won’t be used (you can use Extended Events to monitor this). When you force a plan manually, forcing can still fail. For example, if the forced plan uses an index and the index is dropped, or its definition is changed to the point where it cannot be used in plan in the same manner, then forcing will fail. Important note: if forcing fails, the query will go through normal optimization and compilation and it will execute; SQL Server does not want your query to fail! If you’re forcing plans and not familiar with the reasons that it can fail, note the last_force_failure_reason values listed for sys.query_store_plan. If you have manually forced a plan for a query, and the force plan fails, it remains forced. You have to manually un-force it to stop SQL Server from trying to use that plan. As you can see, there are multiple factors related to plan forcing, which is why you don’t just force a plan and forget it.

There is much sound advice in this post.

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