Performance tuning a transaction

  • Hello SSC,

    Ok, I am going to try and explain this. Please bear with me 🙂

    I have this stored procedure that INSERT/UPDATES a table based on parameters that are being passed in by a portal or UI. So if this client is new, then we INSERT. If there are any changes then we UPDATE. Simple enough right?The issue that I am having is that it seems the transactions are causing a lag on the UI. The transaction doesn't seem to commit fast enough for the end user to see the result. I have a MERGE (see below), that works, but I need to optimize it. At first glance can anyone see where I can squeeze some performance out of this proc?

    I also wanted to mention that 2 of the columns are of XML data type. Which affects performance as well. The data is correct. The XML columns are UPDATING.

    Any help is greatly appreciated!


    BEGIN

        BEGIN TRANSACTION [TRAN1]
        BEGIN TRY

            MERGE

    AS T
            USING @tableVar AS S
            ON (T.[Col] = .[Col] AND T.[Col1] = .[Col1])
            WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN
                INSERT (
                     [val 1]
                    ,[val 2]
                    ,[val 3]
                    )
                VALUES (
                     S.[val 1]
                    ,S.[val 2]
                    ,S.[val 3] )
                WHEN MATCHED
                    AND CAST(T.[xml_col1] AS NVARCHAR(MAX)) != CAST(S.[xml_col1] AS NVARCHAR(MAX))
                    OR CAST(T.[xml_col2] AS NVARCHAR(MAX)) != CAST(S.[xml_col2] AS NVARCHAR(MAX))
                    OR T.[Email] != S.[Email]
                
                THEN
                UPDATE SET
                 T.[val 1] = S.[val 1]
                ,T.[val 2] = S.[val 2]
                ,T.[val 3] = S.[val 3];

        COMMIT TRANSACTION [TRAN1]
        END TRY

        BEGIN CATCH
        ROLLBACK TRANSACTION [TRAN1]
        END CATCH  

    END

    The are no problems, only solutions. --John Lennon

  • Well how long does the proc actually take to run?  One thing to try would be to just take out the comparisons on the matched records, it might be faster to just update the record even if it's to the same value than doing those casts and comparisons.

  • Yeah, that's what they did initially and it was killing performance. Production has millions of rows.

    My task is to optimize this because everything gets UPDATED regardless if there are changes. This was the original Jira ticket.

    The are no problems, only solutions. --John Lennon

  • Lord Slaagh - Monday, June 4, 2018 3:13 PM

    Yeah, that's what they did initially and it was killing performance. Production has millions of rows.

    My task is to optimize this because everything gets UPDATED regardless if there are changes. This was the original Jira ticket.

    It sounds like there's more to this job then.  How many rows are actually being passed in in that table variable?  I mean if you're passing entire data sets that are millions of rows every time someone calls this in a GUI then yeah it's gonna take a long time.

  • 1) How is

    clustered?  By ( Col, Col1) or something else?

    2) How is

    normally searched?  By ( Col, Col1 ) or by something else?

    3) Are they any DML triggers on

    ?

    4) How many rows are in @tableVar?  If it's more than 5 even, use a temp table instead, clus on ( Col, Col1 ) just in case.

    5) MERGE has some known performance issues.  Despite what happened in the past, you should strongly consider UPDATE followed by INSERT instead.

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear." "Norm", on "Cheers". Also from "Cheers", from "Carla": "You need to know 3 things about Tortelli men: Tortelli men draw women like flies; Tortelli men treat women like flies; Tortelli men's brains are in their flies".

  • Comparison on NVARCHAR(MAX) is never going to give you good performance.

  • If there's millions of rows in a table variable, that's likely a problem. Try a temp table instead.

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

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