I want to know the way to test right sqls before tuned and after tuned.
but once I executed the original sql, I got results too fast for tuned sql.
I found below...
How to clear all cached items in Oracle
I did flush data buffer cache and shared pool but it still didn't work.
I guess this answer from that question is related to what I want to know more:
Keep in mind that the operating system and hardware also do caching which can skew your results.
Oracle's version is 11g and Server is HP-UX 11.31.
If the server was Linux, I could've tried clearing buffer using '/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'.(I'm not sure it would works)
I'm searching quite long time for this problem. Is there anyone has this kind of problem?
thanks
If your query is such that the results are being cached in the file system, which your description would suggest, then the query is probably not a "heavy-hitter" overall. But if you were testing in isolation, with not much activity on the database, when the SQL is run in a production environment performance could suffer.
There are several things you can do to determine which version of two queries is better. In fact, entire books have been written on just this topic. But to summarize:
Before you begin, ensure statistics on the tables and indexes are up to date.
See how often the SQL will be executed in the grand scheme of things. If it runs once or twice a day, and takes 2 seconds to run, don't bother trying to tune.
Do a explain plan on both and look at the estimated costs and number of steps.
Turn on tracing for both optimizer steps and execution statistics, and compare.
Related
I just need an approach for this question. Our application connects to Oracle database. It is running fine in production but occasionally some queries take too much time to process (like 5-7 seconds). Sometimes they are update queries and sometimes select queries.
I just want to know how to approach such issues, any tools like nmon would help. Thanks.
90% or more of poor performing queries come down to the execution plan. And probably 90% of those are related to statistics. The place to start would be to get a SQL Monitor report, which will show you the execution plan, together with runtime statistics and identify where time is being spent. Only when you understand the problem, can you come up with the correct solution.
If you are not familiar with SQL Monitor, check out http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/manageability/sqlmonitor-084401.html
I would like to test two queries to find out their performance as apposed to just looking at the execution plan. I have seen Tom Kyte do this all the time on his website as a way to gather evidence on his theories.
I believe there are many pitfalls in performance testing, for example, when i run a query in SQL developer for the first time, that query might return some fair number. Running that exact same query again, returns instantaneously. There must be some sort of caching on the server or client going on and I understand this is important - however I am only interested in non cached performance.
What are the guidelines to performance test? AND how do I write a performance test which repeats the query? Do i just write an anonymous block & loop? How do i get timing information, averages, medians, std deviations?
Oracle (and other databases) cache queries, which is where you see the behavior you describe. A "hard" parse means there's no query plan for the query, which leaves Oracle to figure out the query plan based on indexes and statistics. A "soft" parse is what happens when you run the identical query afterwards, and receive an instantaneous result, because the query plan exists & Oracle re-uses it. See the Ask Tom question about it for more details.
Be aware of the EXPLAIN output:
With the cost-based optimizer, execution plans can and do change as the underlying costs change. EXPLAIN PLAN output shows how Oracle runs the SQL statement when the statement was explained. This can differ from the plan during actual execution for a SQL statement, because of differences in the execution environment and explain plan environment.
Focusing on the non-cached performance gives a worst-case scenario, but given that caching will occur - non-cached benchmarks aren't realistic in everyday use.
To build off OMG Ponies answer, tuning based on timing is something that's possible, but not realistic. You'd have to start either with a fully-cached buffer cache in every case, or a fully-empty buffer cache, and neither of those is going to be representative of reality - especially if there's no competing load.
When I'm tuning, it's generally against a live system with activity, and I focus on tuning logical I/Os, either through using the extended SQL trace (dbms_monitor.session_trace_enable / dbms_monitor.session_trace_disable) and the tkprof utility, or using SQL*Plus and set autotrace traceonly - which does all the work of the query, but throws the output away, because I'm usually not interested in watching a jillion rows scroll by.
The exact mechanism usually involves bound SQL, using something like the following:
variable :my_bind1 number;
variable :my_bind2 varchar2(30);
begin
:my_bind1 := 42;
:my_bind2 := 'some meaningful string';
end;
/
set timing on;
set autotrace traceonly;
[godawful query with binds]
set autotrace off;
Within the results, I'm looking for the plan I'd expect, a comparative value for sorts - assuming any exist - and most importantly, the number of consistent I/Os. That's how many blocks Oracle had to read in consistent mode to satisfy the query. I can't find the original source of the quote, but I think it's Cary Milsap of Method R.
"Tune your logical I/Os, and your physical I/Os will follow."
In performance tuning, if the only piece of data you look at is wall-clock time, you will only be getting a small part of the whole picture. You need to at least look at the execution plan, as well as IO stats, in order to work out how best to tune the query.
Also, you need to eliminate other causes of performance issues - e.g. if there is a general performance issue across many queries, it might not be the fault of just one of them - it might be an architecture problem, or significant concurrent activity on the database, or even an underlying hardware issue.
I've had similar issues to what you describe before; e.g. a certain type of query which should be very fast was taking 30 seconds to run on the first time, then would settle down to a second or two. As soon as I looked at the execution plan, however, it was obvious that it was using a full table scan, because it couldn't use the unique index that had been created. The first time the query ran, most of the data was loaded into the cache (in fact, there were two levels of cache involved - the database buffer cache, as well as a storage-level cache over the disks) so subsequent full table scans were extremely fast.
What is correctly ?
Since 11g there are a few extra complications to take into account. The optimizer pre peeking has become a lot smarter and sql plan stability has a BIG influence. These two features make the database auto tuning but can also have unexpected effects during performance tests, for example because not all variations of the plans are known and accepted at the beginning of the tests.
This might be the cause that a second test run, the day after the first run, suddenly runs much quicker, without any apparent changes.
Since 11g performance testing is less important, compared to writing logically correct code. For example a Cartesian product and filtering out one distinct value van be functional correct but is in most of the cases wrong code because it fetches more data than logically needed.
If the queries fetches the data that is really needed and is in the correct control structure, have the database processes tune the code during the maintenance windows. In many cases the differences between the test environment and production are such that a comparison can not be safely made.
Don't get me wrong, testing is important but mostly for the logic compared to performance testing before 11g, there are extra steps to be taken.
For nice reading see Oracle® Database 2 Day + Performance Tuning Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2)
Is there any performance hit when doing a select across another DB on the same physical machine? So I have 2 databases on the same physical machine running within the same SQL 2008 instance.
For instance in SomStoreProc on_this_db I run
SELECT someFields FROM the_other_db.dbo.someTable
So far from what I have read on the internet, most people seem to indicate NO.
Even if it is not a performance hit, it could be a problem in data integrity as FKs can't be enforced across databases.
However, it is more likely your procs need to be tuned especially if they are thousands of lines long. To begin with look for cursors, correlated subqueries and bad indexing. Also look for where clauses that are nonsaragable and scalar functions that are runing row-by-agonizing-row.
Of course the best way to prove that the separate database is not the issue is to take one slow proc and convert those tables to one database and test performance both ways. Please at least convince them to do this smaller test before they go ahead and make the horribly complicated and time consuming change to one database and then find out they still have performance problems.
And remember, the execution plan is your friend is looking at these things.
We have a web service which provides search over hotels. There is a problem with performance: a single request to the service takes around 5000 ms. Almost all of the time is spent in database by executing storing procedures. During the request our server (mssql2008) consumes ~90% of the processor time. When 2 requests are made in parallel the average time grows and is around 7000 ms. When number of request is increasing, the average time of response is increasing as well. We have 20-30 requests per minute.
Which kind of optimization is the best in this case having in mind that the goal is to provide stable response time for the service:
1) Try to decrease the stored procedures execution time
2) Try to find the way how to unload the server
It is interesting to hear from people who deal with booking sites.
It is interesting to hear from people
who deal with booking sites. Thanks!
This has nothing to do with booking sites, you have poorly written stored procedures, possibly no indexes, your queries are probably not SARGAble and it has to scan the table every time. Are you statistics up to date?
run some procs from SSMS and look at the execution plans
Also a good idea to run profiler. How about your page life expectancy and buffer cache hit ratio, take a look at Use sys.dm_os_performance_counters to get your Buffer cache hit ratio and Page life expectancy counters to get those numbers
I think the first thing you have to do is to quantify what's going on on the server.
Use SQL Server Profiler to get an accurate picture of the activity on the server.
Identify which procedures / SQL statements take up the most resources
Identify high priority SQL operations consuming a lot of resources / taking time
Prioritize
Fix
Now, when I say "Fix", I mean that you should execute the procedure / statement manually in SSMS - Make sure you have "Show Execution Plan" turned ON.
Review the execution plan for parts that consume the most resources and then figure out how to correct that. You may need to create a new index, rewrite the SQL to be more efficient by using hints, etc.
You provide no detail to solve your problem. In general to increase performance of a stored procedure I look at:
1) remove any cursors or loops with set based operations
2) make sure all queries are using an index and using an efficient execution plan (check this with SET SHOWPLAN_ALL ON)
3) make sure there is no locking or blocking slowing it down (see the query given here)
without more info on the specifics, it is hard to make any suggestions.
Almost all of the time is spent in
database by executing storing
procedures.
how many procedures is the app calling? what do they do? are transactions involved? are the procedures recompiling each call? do you have any indexes? are statistics up to date? etc., etc... You need to give a lot more info, or any help here is a complete guess.
Is it better to use a stored procedure or doing it the old way with a connection string and all that good stuff? Our system has been running slow lately and our manager wants us to try to see if we can speed things up a little and we were thinking about changing some of the old database calls over to stored procedures. Is it worth it?
The first thing to do is check the database has all the necessary indexes set up. Analyse where your code is slow, and examine the relevant SQL statements and indexes relating to them. See if you can rewrite the SQL statement to be more efficient. Check that you aren't recompiling an SQL (prepared) statement for every iteration in a loop instead of outside it once.
Moving an SQL statement into a stored procedure isn't going to help if it is grossly inefficient in implementation. However the database will know how to best optimise the SQL and it won't need to do it repeatedly. It can also make the client side code cleaner by turning a complex SQL statement into a simple procedure call.
I would take a quick look at Stored Procedures are EVIL.
So long as your calls are consistent the database will store the execution plan (MS SQL anyway). The strongest remaining reason for using stored procedures are for easy and sure security management.
If I were you I'd first be looking for adding indices where required. Also run a profiling tool to examine what is taking long and if that sql needs to changed, e.g. adding more Where clauses or restricting result set.
You should consider caching where you can.
Stored procedures will not make things faster.
However, rearranging your logic will have a huge impact. The tidy, focused transactions that you design when thinking of stored procedures are hugely beneficial.
Also, stored procedures tend to use bind variables, where other programming languages sometimes rely on building SQL statements on-the-fly. A small, fixed set of SQL statements and bind variables is fast. Dynamic SQL statements are slow.
An application which is "running slow lately" does not need coding changes.
Measure. Measure. Measure. "slow" doesn't mean much when it comes to performance tuning. What is slow? Which exact transaction is slow? Which table is slow? Focus.
Control all change. All. What changed? OS patch? RDBMS change? Application change? Something changed to slow things down.
Check for constraints in scale. Is a table slowing down because 80% of the data is history that you use for reporting once a year?
Stored procedures are never the solution to performance problems until you can absolutely point to a specific block of code which is provably faster as a stored procedure.
stored procedures can be really help if they avoid sending huge amounts of data and/or avoid doing roundtrips to the server,so they can be valuable if your application has one of these problems.
After you finish your research you will realize there are two extreme views at opposite side of the spectrum. Historically the Java community has been against store procs due to the availability of frameworks such as hibernate, conversely the .NET community has used more stored procs and this legacy goes as far as the vb5/6 days. Put all this information in context and stay away from the extreme opinions on either side of the coin.
Speed should not be the primary factor to decide against or in favor of stored procs. You can achieve sp performace using inline SQL with hibernate and other frameworks. Consider maintenance and which other programs such as reports, scripts could use the same stored procs used by your application. If your scenario requires multiple consumers for the same SQL code, stored procedures are a good candidate, maintenance will be easier. If this is not the case, and you decide to use inline sql, consider externalizing it in config files to facilitate maintenance.
At the end of the day, what counts is what will make your particular scenario a success for your stakeholders.
If your server is getting noticeably slower in your busy season it may be because of saturation rather than anything inefficent in the database. Basic queuing theory tells us that a server gets hyperbolically slower as it approaches saturation.
The basic relationship is 1/(1-X) where X is the proportion of load. This describes the average queue length or time to wait before being served. Therefore a server that is getting saturated will slow down very rapidly when the load spikes.
A server that is 25% loaded will have an average service time of 1.333K for some constant K (loosely, K is the time for the machine to perform one transaction). A server that is 50% loaded will have an average service time of 2K and a server that is 90% loaded will have an average service time of 10K. Given that the slowdowns are hyperbolic in nature, it often doesn't take a large change in overall load to produce a significant degradation in response time.
Obviously this is somewhat simplistic as the server will be processing multiple requests concurrently (there are more elaborate queuing models for this situation), but the broad principle still applies.
So, if your server is experiencing transient loads that are saturating it, you will experience patches of noticeable slow-down. Note that these slow-downs need only be in one bottlenecked area of the system to slow the whole process down. If you are only experiencing this now in a busy season there is a possibility that your server has simply hit a constraint on a resource, rather than being particularly slow or inefficient.
Note that this possibility is not antithetical to the possibility of inefficiencies in the code. You may find that the way to ease the bottleneck is to tune some of your queries.
In order to tell if the system is bottlenecked, start gathering profiling information. If you can find resources with a large number of waits, this should give you a good starting point.
The final possibility is that you need to upgrade your server. If there are no major inefficiencies in the code (this might well be the case if profiling doesn't indicate any disproportionately large bottlenecks) you may simply need bigger hardware. I have no idea what your volumes are, but don't discount the possibility that you may have outgrown your server.
Yes, stored procs is a step forward towards acheiving good performance. The main reason is that stored procedures can be pre-compiled and their execution plan cached.
You however need to first analyse where your performance bottlenecks are really - so that you approach this exercise in a structured way.
As it has been suggested in one of the responses, try analyse using a profiler tool where the problem is - e.g do you need to create indexes...
Cheers
Like all of the above posts suggest, you first want to clean up your SQL statements, have appropriate indexes. caching can be tricky, I cant comment unless I have more detail on what you are trying to accomplish.
But one thing about sprocs, make sure you dont let it generate dynamic SQL statements
because for one, it will be pointless and it can be subjected to SQL Injection attacks...this has happened in one of the projects I looked into.
I would recommend sprocs for updates mainly, and then select statements.
good luck :)
You can never say in advance. You must do it and measure the difference because in 9 out of 10 cases, the bottleneck is not where you think.
If you use a stored procedure, you don't have to transmit the data. DBs are usually slow at executing [EDIT]complex[/EDIT] stored procedures [EDIT]with loops, higher math, etc[/EDIT]. So it really depends on how much work you would need to do, how slow your network is, how fast the DB executes this particular code, etc.