Reducing Contention on the NESTING_TRANSACTION_FULL latch

Each additional worker thread in a parallel execution plan executes inside a nested transaction associated with the single parent transaction.

Parallel worker access to shared parent transaction structures is protected by a latch. A NESTING_TRANSACTION_READONLY latch is used for a read-only transaction. A NESTING_TRANSACTION_FULL latch is used if the transaction has modified the database.

This design has its roots in SQL Server 7, where read-only query parallelism was introduced. SQL Server 2000 built on this with parallel index builds, which for the first time allowed multiple threads to cooperate to change a persistent database structure. Many improvements have followed since then, but the fundamental parent-child transaction design remains today.

Though lightweight, a latch can become a point of contention when requested sufficiently frequently in incompatible modes by many different threads. Some contention on shared resources is to be expected; it becomes a problem when latch waits start to affect CPU utilisation and throughput.

More Consistent Execution Plan Timings in SQL Server 2022

The updated showplan schema shipped with SSMS 19 preview 2 contains an interesting comment:

ExclusiveProfileTimeActive: true if the actual elapsed time (ActualElapsedms attribute) and the actual CPU time (ActualCPUms attribute) represent the time interval spent exclusively within the relational iterator.

What does this mean?

Be Careful with LOBs and OPTION (RECOMPILE)

It sometimes makes sense to add OPTION (RECOMPILE) to a query. Typically this will be when:

• A good enough plan for the query is very sensitive to one or more parameters
• No good single value exists for the parameter to use in a hint
• Optimize for unknown doesn’t give a good result
• The plan might be expected to change over time
• The cost of recompiling the statement is much less than the expected execution time
• Recompiling every time is very likely to save more time and resources than it costs overall

All that is fairly well-known. The point of this short post is to draw your attention to another side-effect of adding OPTION (RECOMPILE) — the parameter embedding optimization (PEO).

Empty Parallel Zones

An empty parallel zone is an area of the plan bounded by exchanges (or the leaf level) containing no operators.

How and why does SQL Server sometimes generate a parallel plan with an empty parallel zone?

Incorrect Results with Parallel Eager Spools and Batch Mode

You might have noticed a warning at the top of the release notes for SQL Server 2016 SP2 CU 16:

Note: After you apply CU 16 for SQL Server 2016 SP2, you might encounter an issue in which DML (insert/update/delete) queries that use parallel plans cannot complete any execution and encounter HP_SPOOL_BARRIER waits. You can use the trace flag 13116 or MAXDOP=1 hint to work around this issue. This issue is related to the introduction of fix for 13685819 and it will be fixed in the next Cumulative Update.

That warning links to bug reference 13685819 on the same page. There isn’t a separate KB article, only the description:

Fixes an issue with insert query in SQL Server 2016 that reads the data from the same table and uses a parallel execution plan may produce duplicate rows

sql_handle and the SQL Server batch text hash

This article describes the structure of a sql_handle and shows how the batch text hash component is calculated.

Closest Match with Sort Rewinds

In When Do SQL Server Sorts Rewind? I described how most sorts can only rewind when they contain at most one row. The exception is in-memory sorts, which can rewind at most 500 rows and 16KB of data.

These are certainly tight restrictions, but we can still make use of them on occasion.

To illustrate, I am going reuse a demo Itzik Ben-Gan provided in part one of his Closest Match series, specifically solution 2 (modified value range and indexing).

As Itzik’s title suggests, the task is to find the closest match for a value in one table in a second table.

As Itzik describes it:

The challenge is to match to each row from T1 the row from T2 where the absolute difference between T2.val and T1.val is the lowest. In case of ties (multiple matching rows in T2), match the top row based on val ascending, keycol ascending order.

That is, the row with the lowest value in the val column, and if you still have ties, the row with the lowest keycol value. The tiebreaker is used to guarantee determinism.

SQL Server 2019 Aggregate Splitting

The SQL Server 2019 query optimizer has a new trick available to improve the performance of large aggregations. The new exploration abilities are encoded in two new closely-related optimizer rules:

• GbAggSplitToRanges
• SelOnGbAggSplitToRanges

The extended event query_optimizer_batch_mode_agg_split is provided to track when this new optimization is considered. The description of this event is:

Occurs when the query optimizer detects batch mode aggregation is likely to spill and tries to split it into multiple smaller aggregations.

Other than that, this new feature hasn’t been documented yet. This article is intended to help fill that gap.

A bug with Halloween Protection and the OUTPUT Clause

Background

The OUTPUT clause can be used to return results from an INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or MERGE statement. The data can be returned to the client, inserted to a table, or both.

There are two ways to add OUTPUT data to a table:

1. Using OUTPUT INTO
2. With an outer INSERT statement.

For example:

-- Test table
DECLARE @Target table
(
    id integer IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL, 
    c1 integer NULL
);

-- Holds rows from the OUTPUT clause
DECLARE @Output table 
(
    id integer NOT NULL, 
    c1 integer NULL
);

How MAXDOP Really Works

A few days ago I ran a Twitter poll:

The most popular answer gets highlighted by Twitter at the end of the poll, but as with many things on social media, that doesn’t mean it is correct:

Pulling Group By Above a Join

One of the transformations available to the SQL Server query optimizer is pulling a logical Group By (and any associated aggregates) above a Join.

Visually, this means transforming a tree of logical operations from:

…to this:

The above diagrams are logical representations. They need to be implemented as physical operators to appear in an execution plan. The options are:

• Group By
  • Hash Match Aggregate
  • Stream Aggregate
  • Distinct Sort
• Join
  • Nested Loops Join
  • Nested Loops Apply
  • Hash Match Join
  • Merge Join

When the optimizer moves a Group By above a Join it has to preserve the semantics. The new sequence of operations must be guaranteed to return the same results as the original in all possible circumstances.

One cannot just pick up a Group By and arbitrarily move it around the query tree without risking incorrect results.

Batch Mode Bitmap Demos

This is a companion post to my main article Batch Mode Bitmaps in SQL Server. This post provides demos and illustrations to supplement the technical article.

The scripts presented here were run on SQL Server 2017 CU 16.

Apply versus Nested Loops Join

SQL is a declarative language. We use SQL to write a logical query specification that defines the results we want. For example, we might write a query using either APPLY or JOIN that logically describes exactly the same results.

It is up to the query optimizer to find an efficient physical implementation of that logical requirement. SQL Server is free to choose any plan it likes, so long as the results are guaranteed to be the same as specified in the original SQL.

The optimizer is capable of transforming an apply to a join and vice versa. It generally tries to rewrite apply to join during initial compilation to maximize the searchable plan space during cost-based optimization. Having transformed an apply to a join early on, it may also consider a transformation back to an apply shape later on to assess the merits of e.g. an index loops join.

Cardinality Estimation for Disjunctive (OR) Predicates in SQL Server 2014 Onward

Introduction

Back in January 2014, I wrote an article called Cardinality Estimation for Multiple Predicates that described the cardinality estimation process for queries with multiple predicates, from the point of view of the old and new cardinality estimators.

The article describes the various behaviours and formulas involved, along with the usual sprinkling of documented and undocumented trace flags. I described the formula SQL Server 2014 uses to calculate a cardinality estimate for multiple predicates connected with AND (conjunctive predicates), which was already relatively well-known.

Despite some fairly energetic research, and basic-to-intermediate skills with Excel, I was unable to deduce a similar formula for the disjunctive case, where predicates are connected by OR. The trace flag output I describe in the other article clearly showed that exponential backoff was used in the new 2014 cardinality estimator, but the precise formula eluded me.

Nested Loops Prefetching

Nested loops join query plans can be a lot more interesting (and complicated) than is commonly realized.

One query plan area I get asked about a lot is prefetching. It is not documented in full detail anywhere, so this seems like a good topic to address in a blog post.

The examples used in this article are based on questions asked by Adam Machanic.

Incorrect Results Caused By Adding an Index

Say you have the following two tables, one partitioned and one not:

CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION PF (integer)
AS RANGE RIGHT
FOR VALUES (1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000);

CREATE PARTITION SCHEME PS
AS PARTITION PF
ALL TO ([PRIMARY]);

-- Partitioned
CREATE TABLE dbo.T1
(
    T1ID    integer NOT NULL,
    SomeID  integer NOT NULL,

    CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.T1 T1ID]
        PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (T1ID)
        ON PS (T1ID)
);

-- Not partitioned
CREATE TABLE dbo.T2
(
    T2ID    integer IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL,
    T1ID    integer NOT NULL,

    CONSTRAINT [PK dbo.T2 T2ID]
        PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (T2ID)
        ON [PRIMARY]
);

Working Around Missed Optimizations

In my last post, we saw how a query featuring a scalar aggregate could be transformed by the optimizer to a more efficient form. As a reminder, here’s the schema again:

Optimization Phases and Missed Opportunities

There are two complementary skills that are very useful in query tuning. One is the ability to read and interpret execution plans. The second is knowing a bit about how the query optimizer works to translate SQL text into an execution plan.

Putting the two things together can help us spot times when an expected optimization was not applied, resulting in an execution plan that is not as efficient as it could be.

The lack of documentation around exactly which optimizations SQL Server can apply (and in what circumstances) means that a lot of this comes down to experience, however.

Hello Operator, My Switch Is Bored

This post is in two parts. The first part looks at the Switch execution plan operator. The second part is about an invisible plan operator and cardinality estimates on filtered indexes.

Optimizer Limitations with Filtered Indexes

One of the filtered index use cases mentioned in the product documentation concerns a column that contains mostly NULL values. The idea is to create a filtered index that excludes the NULLs, resulting in a smaller nonclustered index that requires less maintenance than the equivalent unfiltered index.

Another popular use of filtered indexes is to filter NULLs from a UNIQUE index, giving the behaviour users of other database engines might expect from a default UNIQUE index or constraint: Uniqueness enforced only for non-NULL values.

Unfortunately, the query optimizer has limitations where filtered indexes are concerned. This post looks at a couple of less well-known examples.