T-SQL - wrong query execution plan behaviour - performance

Question

One of our queries degraded after generating load on the DB.
Our query is a join between 3 tables:
Base table which contain 10 M rows.
EventPerson table which contain 5000 rows.
EventPerson788 which is empty.
It seems that the optimizer scans the index on the EventPerson instead of seek, this the script for replicating the issue:
--Create Tables
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[BASE](
[ID] [bigint] NOT NULL,
[IsActive] BIT
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([ID] ASC)
)ON [PRIMARY]
GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[EventPerson](
[DUID] [bigint] NOT NULL,
[PersonInvolvedID] [bigint] NULL,
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([DUID] ASC)
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [EventPerson_IDX] ON [dbo].[EventPerson]
(
[PersonInvolvedID] ASC
)
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[EventPerson788](
[EntryID] [bigint] NOT NULL,
[LinkedSuspectID] [bigint] NULL,
[sourceid] [bigint] NULL,
PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([EntryID] ASC)
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[EventPerson788] WITH CHECK
ADD CONSTRAINT [FK7A34153D3720F84A]
FOREIGN KEY([sourceid]) REFERENCES [dbo].[EventPerson] ([DUID])
GO
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[EventPerson788] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK7A34153D3720F84A]
GO
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [EventPerson788_IDX]
ON [dbo].[EventPerson788] ([LinkedSuspectID] ASC)
GO
--POPOLATE BASE TABLE
DECLARE #I BIGINT=1
WHILE (#I<10000000)
BEGIN
begin transaction
INSERT INTO BASE(ID) VALUES(#I)
SET #I+=1
if (#I%10000=0 )
begin
commit;
end;
END
go
--POPOLATE EventPerson TABLE
DECLARE #I BIGINT=1
WHILE (#I<5000)
BEGIN
BEGIN TRANSACTION
INSERT INTO EventPerson(DUID,PersonInvolvedID) VALUES(#I,(SELECT TOP 1 ID FROM BASE ORDER BY NEWID()))
SET #I+=1
IF(#I%10000=0 )
COMMIT TRANSACTION ;
END
GO
This the query :
select
count(EventPerson.DUID)
from
EventPerson
inner loop join
Base on EventPerson.DUID = base.ID
left outer join
EventPerson788 on EventPerson.DUID = EventPerson788.sourceid
where
(EventPerson.PersonInvolvedID = 37909 or
EventPerson788.LinkedSuspectID = 37909)
AND BASE.IsActive = 1
Do you have any idea why the optimizer decides to use index scan instead of index seek?
Workaround that already done :
Analyze tables and build statistics.
Rebuild Indices.
Try the FORCESEEK hint
None of the above persuaded the optimizer to run an index seek on EventPerson and seek on the base tables.
Thanks for your help .

Answer 1

The scan is there because of the or condition and the outer join against EventPerson788.
Either it will return rows from EventPerson when EventPerson.PersonInvolvedID = 37909 or when the there exists rows in EventPerson788 where EventPerson788.LinkedSuspectID = 37909. The last part means that every row in EventPerson has to be checked against the join.
The fact that EventPerson788 is empty can not be used by the query optimizer since the query plan is saved to be reused later when there might be matching rows in EventPerson788.
Update:
You can rewrite your query using a union all instead of or to get a seek in EventPerson.
select count(EventPerson.DUID)
from
(
select EventPerson.DUID
from EventPerson
where EventPerson.PersonInvolvedID = 1556 and
not exists (select *
from EventPerson788
where EventPerson788.LinkedSuspectID = 1556)
union all
select EventPerson788.sourceid
from EventPerson788
where EventPerson788.LinkedSuspectID = 1556
) as EventPerson
inner join BASE
on EventPerson.DUID=base.ID
where
BASE.IsActive=1

Answer 2

Well, you're asking SQL Server to count the rows of the EventPerson table - so why do you expect a seek to be better than a scan here?
For a COUNT, the SQL Server optimizer will almost always use a scan - it needs to count the rows, after all - all of them... it will do a clustered index scan, if no other non-nullable columns are indexed.
If you have an index on a small, non-nullable column (e.g. on a ID INT or something like that), it would probably do a scan on that index instead (less data to read to count all rows).
But in general: seek is great for selecting one or a few rows - but it sucks if you're dealing with all rows (like for a count)
You can easily observe this behavior if you're using the AdventureWorks sample database.
When doing a COUNT(*) on the Sales.SalesOrderDetail table which has over 120000 rows like this:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail
then you'll get an index scan on IX_SalesOrderDetail_ProductID - it just doesn't pay off to do seeks on over 120000 entries!
However, if you do the same operation on a smaller set of data, like this:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail
WHERE ProductID = 897
then you get back 2 rows out of all of them - and SQL Server will now use an index seek on that same index.