Because I am not familiar with ADO under the hood, I was wonder which of the two methods of finding a record generally yields quicker results using VB6.
Use a 'select' statement using 'where' as a qualifier. If the recordset count yields zero, the record was not found.
Select all records iterating through records with a client-side cursor until record is found, or not at all.
The recordset is in the range of 10,000 records and will grow. Also, I am open to anything that will yield shorter search times other than what was mentioned.
SELECT count(*) FROM foo WHERE some_column='some value'
If the result is greater than 0 the record satisfying your condition was found in the database. It is unlikely you would get any faster than this. Proper indexes on the columns you are using in the WHERE clause could considerably improve performance.
In every case I can think of, selecting using the where clause is faster.
Even in situations where the client code will iterate through the whole database (file-based databases like Access, for example), you will have optimized code written in c or c++ doing the selection (in the database driver.) This is always faster than VB6.
For Database engines (SQL, MySQL, etc), the performance increase can even be more profound. By using the where clause, you limit the amount of data that must be transmitted over the network, vastly improving the response.
Some additional performance tips:
Select only the fields you want.
Build indexes on frequently used fields
Watch what kind of recordset you are returning. Use Forward-only cursors if you are just returning data from a database.
Lastly, I was shocked by VB.NET's database performance, it being several times faster than the fastest VB6 code.
Related
For querying an sqlite table based on a list of IDs (i.e. distinct primary keys) I am using following statement (example based on the Chinook Database):
SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE CustomerId IN (1,2,3,8,20,35)
However, my actual list of IDs might become rather large (>1000). Thus, I was wondering if this approach using the IN statement is the most efficient or if there is a better/optimized way to query an sqlite table based on a list of primary keys.
If the number of elements in the IN is large enough, SQLite constructs a temporary index for them. This is likely to be more efficient than creating a temporary table manually.
The length of the IN list is limited only be the maximum length of an SQL statement, and by memory.
Because the statement you wrote does not include any instructions to SQLite about how to find the rows you want the concept of "optimizing" doesn't really exist -- there's nothing to optimize. The job of planning the best algorithm to retrieve the data belongs to the SQLite query optimizer.
Some databases do have idiosyncrasies in their query optimizers which can lead to performance issues but I wouldn't expect SQLite to have any trouble finding the correct algorithm for this simple query, even with lots of values in the IN list. I would only worry about trying to guide the query optimizer to another execution plan if and when you find that there's a performance problem.
SQLite Optimizer Overview
IN (expression-list) does use an index if available.
Beyond that, I can't glean any guarantees from it, so the following is subject to a performance measaurement.
Axis 1: how to pass the expression-list
hardocde as string. Overhead for int-to-string conversion and string-to-int parsing
bind parameters (i.e. the statement is ... WHERE CustomerID in (?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?....), which is easier to build from a predefined string than hardcoded values). Prevents int → string → int conversion, but the default limit for number of parameters is 999. This can be increased by SQLITE_LIMIT_VARIABLE_NUMBER, but might lead to excessive allocations.
Temporary table. Possibly less efficient than any of the above methods after the statement is prepared, but that doesn't help if most time is spent preparing the statement
Axis 2: Statement optimization
If the same expression-list is used in multiple queries against changing CustomerIDs, one of the following may help:
reusing a prepared statement with hardcoded values (i.e. don't pass 1001 parameters)
create a temporary table for the CustomerIDs with index (so the index is created once, not on the fly for every query)
If the expression-list is different with every query, ist is probably best to let SQLite do its job. The following might be an improvement
create a temp table for the expression-list
bulk-insert expression-list elements using union all
use a sub query
(from my experience with SQLite, I'd expect it to be on par or slightly worse)
Axis 3 Ask Richard
the sqlite mailing list (yeah I know, that technology even older than rotary phones!) is pretty active with often excellent advise, including from the author of SQLite. 90% chance someone will dismiss you ass "Measure before asking suhc a question!", 10% chance someone gives you detailed insight.
I have a table with data relating to several moments in time that I have to keep updated. To save space and time, however, each row in my table refers to a given day and hourly and quarter-hourly data for that day are scattered throughout the several columns in that same row. When updating the data for a particular moment in time I, therefore, must choose the column that has to be be updated through some programming logic in my PL/SQL procedures and functions.
Is there a way to dynamically choose the column or columns involved in an update/merge operation without having to assemble the query string anew every time? Performance is a concern and the throughput must be high, so I can't do anything that would perform poorly.
Edit: I am aware of normalization issues. However I still would like to know a good way for choosing the columns to be updated/merged dynamically and programatically.
The only way to dynamically choose what column or columns to use for a DML statement is to use dynamic SQL. And the only way to use dynamic SQL is to generate a SQL statement that can then be prepared and executed. Of course, you can assemble the string in a more or less efficient manner, you can potentially parse the statement once and execute it multiple times, etc. in order to minimize the expense of using dynamic SQL. But using dynamic SQL that performs close to what you'd get with static SQL requires quite a bit more work.
I'd echo Ben's point-- it doesn't appear that you are saving time by structuring your table this way. You'll likely get much better performance by normalizing the table properly. I'm not sure what space you believe you are saving but I would tend to doubt that denormalizing your table structure is going to save you much if anything in terms of space.
One way to do what is required is to create a package with all possible updates (which aren't that many, as I'll only update one field at a given time) and then choosing which query to use depending on my internal logic. This would, however, lead to a big if/else or switch/case-like statement. Is there a way to achieve similar results with better performance?
I have a query like:
SELECT id, value
FROM very_large_table -- over 5 million records
WHERE foo(value) > 5 AND boo(value) IS NOT NULL
Assume that foo and boo are functions, that also makes a lot of selects on super large table without indexes (so it's execution costs a lot).
I (as a programmer) know, that foo in 99% time returns more than 5, but boo is 99,9% returns NULL.
It's obvious, that first of all boo should be calculated. And if it's NULL, we don't want this row in the result set. So we DON'T need to calculate foo, because boo is already NULL.
Are there any packages/articles on this theme, because, if I'm doing right - oracle doen't do this kind of optimization
The above is just a sample. In my case there are a lot of functions (~50) and I'm using them in various selects in various combinations. So rewriting the functions is not really and option becuse in real situation a have a lot of them: i just wanted to show that these requests are realy slow. I'm just thinkin of some kind of optimizer (in addition to oracle's one)
Oracle CAN do this sort of optimization but needs to be spoon fed
It is called the Oracle Extensible Optimizer and associate statistics
But the easy way to do it in this case is something like this
where case when boo(value) is null then 0 else foo(value) end > 5
which forces the boo function to be evaluated before the foo.
The advanced stuff would be applicable if you don't have control over the query (eg using some BI tool). Another reason is if you have a bunch of coders where it would be excessive to develop that sort of understanding and it is easier to have one or two 'database guys' manage that aspect of things.
Just write function boofoo that runs boo, then foo only if boo was not null.
And to tune that further, you could add a function-based index on that table/column:
create index vlt_boofoo on very_large_table (boofoo(value));
In case you are using Oracle 11 Enterprise, Result Cache could help. This would cache the results of your functions once executed, and would not execute them again unless the data in the underlying tables changes.
If this does not work, you could try to replace your functions by VIEWs to that tables (assuming that you call your functions from more than one place - otherwise you could just join your tables).
This would allow to join these views instead of using the functions, which might allow the optimizer to query your big tables only once instead of once in each call of your functions.
So instead of
CREATE FUNCTION foo( in_value IN very_large_table.value%TYPE )
RETURN PLS_INTEGER
AS
v_count PLS_INTEGER;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT(*)
INTO v_count
FROM some_other_large_table
WHERE value = in_value;
RETURN v_count;
END foo;
you could
CREATE VIEW view_foo AS
SELECT value, COUNT(*)
FROM some_other_large_table
GROUP BY value;
and join that
SELECT t.id, t.value
FROM very_large_table t -- over 5 million records
JOIN view_foo foo ON ( foo.value = t.value )
JOIN view_boo ...
I once worked on a similar problem. In my case I only had one function but it was a wicked one: the application was for name-matching and the function returned a score indicating the similarity between a row's value and the user input. Some names were very common or matched many different variants and so returned thousands of rows, others would return a handful or non at all. The table was huge, and no scope for indexing because we couldn't possibly map all the possible user inputs.
There are a number of alternative mechanisms for optimizing besides indexes.
Parallel query. A brute force solution which works well if your database server has lots of CPUs and you don't have many users who want to query the table simultaneously. Requires Enterprise Edition license.
Partitioning. If you have other criteria to filter your query (creation date or something) then you might be able to apply Partition pruning to reduce the query's scope. Partitioning is not an automatic performance gain: it is primarily a management option and can degrade the performance of queries which go against the grain of the partition key. Requires Enterprise Edition license plus the Partitioning Option, so expensive.
Server Result Set caching. In 11g we can store the results of query/sub-query or a function in memory; we pay the cost of executing it once and all subsequent queries get the result set back immediately. This is good for deterministic functions and slowly changing tables. Find out more. It trades memory for performance. Requires 11g and Enterprise Edition license.
Materialized views. We can use MViews to pre-calculate the results of certain queries and the optimizer will automatically use them through the QUERY REWRITE functionality. Again this works best with slowly-changing tables. It trades disk space for performance. Requires Enterprise Edition license.
Tokenizing. Some of your values may have common elements which relate to the value returned by the function. For instance a value which starts with 'Z' is never going to have a FOO() score greater than 4. So you can extract those tokens - either in separate tables which you use in joins or as columns (in 11g as virtual columns) which you can index. You need to add those token filters to the query, perhaps dynamically. Obviously this will only work for certain kinds of data. Available in all editions.
Index other columns. A poor man's partitioning, but if you have other columns which are used in the query consider whether any of them can be used to constrain the result set before applying your functions. Available in all editions.
Function-based indexes. I know you have already discounted this option but you should reconsider. You don't need to build indexes for every function. In the example you give BOO() filters out most of the rows and FOO() hardly any. Thus an index on BOO() would be highly optimal and an index on FOO() worse than useless. So, look at your functions: determine which ones are highly selective and are used most often, and build function-based indexes for them. Available in all editions.
As you can see, a lot of these optimizations require the Enterprise Edition. Well, Oracle wants you to spring for the more expensive license, that's why they restrict the cool features. The optimizations available in the Standard Edition require more effort on our part.
How did I solve my problem? Well I was on 9i, so Result Set Caching was not available to me, but that was the one I really wanted. Unfortunately I had way too many concurrent users for parallel query to be feasible. My final solution was a mixture of Tokenizing and complicated indexing structures.
Are there general ABAP-specific tips related to performance of big SELECT queries?
In particular, is it possible to close once and for all the question of FOR ALL ENTRIES IN vs JOIN?
A few (more or less) ABAP-specific hints:
Avoid SELECT * where it's not needed, try to select only the fields that are required. Reason: Every value might be mapped several times during the process (DB Disk --> DB Memory --> Network --> DB Driver --> ABAP internal). It's easy to save the CPU cycles if you don't need the fields anyway. Be very careful if you SELECT * a table that contains BLOB fields like STRING, this can totally kill your DB performance because the blob contents are usually stored on different pages.
Don't SELECT ... ENDSELECT for small to medium result sets, use SELECT ... INTO TABLE instead.
Reason: SELECT ... INTO TABLE performs a single fetch and doesn't keep the cursor open while SELECT ... ENDSELECT will typically fetch a single row for every loop iteration.
This was a kind of urban myth - there is no performance degradation for using SELECT as a loop statement. However, this will keep an open cursor during the loop which can lead to unwanted (but not strictly performance-related) effects.
For large result sets, use a cursor and an internal table.
Reason: Same as above, and you'll avoid eating up too much heap space.
Don't ORDER BY, use SORT instead.
Reason: Better scalability of the application server.
Be careful with nested SELECT statements.
While they can be very handy for small 'inner result sets', they are a huge performance hog if the nested query returns a large result set.
Measure, Measure, Measure
Never assume anything if you're worried about performance. Create a representative set of test data and run tests for different implementations. Learn how to use ST05 and SAT.
There won't be a way to close your second question "once and for all". First of all, FOR ALL ENTRIES IN 'joins' a database table and an internal (memory) table while JOIN only operates on database tables. Since the database knows nothing about the internal ABAP memory, the FOR ALL ENTRIES IN statement will be transformed to a set of WHERE statements - just try and use the ST05 to trace this. Second, you can't add values from the second table when using FOR ALL ENTRIES IN. Third, be aware that FOR ALL ENTRIES IN always implies DISTINCT. There are a few other pitfalls - be sure to consult the on-line ABAP reference, they are all listed there.
If the number of records in the second table is small, both statements should be more or less equal in performance - the database optimizer should just preselect all values from the second table and use a smart joining algorithm to filter through the first table. My recommendation: Use whatever feels good, don't try to tweak your code to illegibility.
If the number of records in the second table exceeds a certain value, Bad Things [TM] happen with FOR ALL ENTRIES IN - the contents of the table are split into multiple sets, then the query is transformed (see above) and re-run for each set.
Another note: The "Avoid SELECT *" statement is true in general, but I can tell you where it is false.
When you are going to take most of the fields anyway, and where you have several queries (in the same program, or different programs that are likely to be run around the same time) which take most of the fields, especially if they are different fields that are missing.
This is because the App Server Data buffers are based on the select query signature. If you make sure to use the same query, then you can ensure that the buffer can be used instead of hitting the database again. In this case, SELECT * is better than selecting 90% of the fields, because you make it much more likely that the buffer will be used.
Also note that as of the last version I tested, the ABAP DB layer wasn't smart enough to recognize SELECT A, B as being the same as SELECT B, A, which means you should always put the fields you take in the same order (preferable the table order) in order to make sure again that the data buffer on the application is being well used.
I usually follow the rules stated in this pdf from SAP: "Efficient Database Programming with ABAP"
It shows a lot of tips in optimizing queries.
This question will never be completely answered.
ABAP statement for accessing database is interpreted several times by different components of whole system (SAP and DB). Behavior of each component depends from component itself, its version and settings. Main part of interpretation is done in DB adapter on SAP side.
The only viable approach for reaching maximum performance is measurement on particular system (SAP version and DB vendor and version).
There are also quite extensive hints and tips in transaction SE30. It even allows you (depending on authorisations) to write code snippets of your own & measure it.
Unfortunately we can't close the "for all entries" vs join debate as it is very dependent on how your landscape is set up, wich database server you are using, the efficiency of your table indexes etc.
The simplistic answer is let the DB server do as much as possible. For the "for all entries" vs join question this means join. Except every experienced ABAP programmer knows that it's never that simple. You have to try different scenarios and measure like vwegert said. Also remember to measure in your live system as well, as sometimes the hardware configuration or dataset is significantly different to have entirely different results in your live system than test.
I usually follow the following conventions:
Never do a select *, Select only the required fields.
Never use 'into corresponding table of' instead create local structures which has all the required fields.
In the where clause, try to use as many primary keys as possible.
If select is made to fetch a single record and all primary keys are included in where clause use Select single, or else use SELECT UP TO TO 1 ROWS, ENDSELECT.
Try to use Join statements to connect tables instead of using FOR ALL ENTRIES.
If for all entries cannot be avoided ensure that the internal table is not empty and a delete the duplicate entries to increase performance.
Two more points in addition to the other answers:
usually you use JOIN for two or more tables in the database and you use FOR ALL ENTRIES IN to join database tables with a table you have in memory. If you can, JOIN.
usually the IN operator is more convinient than FOR ALL ENTRIES IN. But the kernel translates IN into a long select statement. The length of such a statement is limited and you get a dump when it gets too long. In this case you are forced to use FOR ALL ENTRIES IN despite the performance implications.
With in-memory database technologies, it's best if you can finish all data and calculations on the database side with JOINs and database aggregation functions like SUM.
But if you can't, at least try to avoid accessing database in LOOPs. Also avoid reading the database without using indexes, of course.
I am writing a stored procedure to perform a dynamic search that spans 10+ database tables. With millions of records in each table and a dynamic set of search parameters*, I am having some trouble optimizing the procedure.
Is there a "best practice" for building these kinds of queries? E.g. Use strings to build a dynamic query, use a huge list of IF THEN .. ELSE statements, etc? Can anyone provide a simple example or point me to some literature that will help? Here's some psuedocode for the stored procedure I am developing, which accepts a collection of parameters and a ref cursor.
v_query = "SELECT .....";
v_name = ... -- retrieve "name" parameter from collection
if v_name is not null then
v_query := v_query || ' AND table.Name = ' || v_name;
end if;
open search_cursor for v_query;
...
*By "dynamic set of search parameters," I mean that I pass in a collection of parameters. I figured this would be easier than making the caller pass in 20 parameters if they only want to search on one.
There are problems with using the static query approach; also be very careful about using the CURSOR_SHARING=FORCE option - it can really raise hell with your system if you haven't done a coverage test to ensure that all your other queries will work the way you want.
Problems with static queries:
The (x is null or x = col) predicates tend to kill any chance of using indexes. Since the query plan is computed at the time query is parsed the first time, the indexes you use will be based on the values for the first run of the query; later runs, which may not constrain on the same columns, will still use the same indexes.
Having one static statement with substitution variables will prevent the optimizer from making an intelligent choice about which index to use based on the data distribution. In a dynamic query (or in the first run of a query with bind variables), Oracle will see how selective your constraint is; a highly selective constraint will become a prime candidate for index use. For example, if your table had a row for every person in the U.S., STATE='Alaska' will be much more likely to use the index on STATE than STATE='California'.
Of course, in both these cases, if the dynamic columns in your WHERE clause are not indexed anyway, it doesn't matter, although I'd be surprised if that were the case in a database the size you're talking about.
Also, consider the real cost of all that hard parsing. Yes, hard parses serialize system resources, which makes them expensive, but only in the context of high volume queries. By their nature, ad-hoc queries do not get run very often. The cost you pay for all the hard parses you incur in an entire day will likely be hundreds of times less than the cost of a single query that uses the wrong indexes.
In the past, I've implemented these systems pretty much like you've done here - a base query portion, then iterating over a constraint list and adding WHERE clause predicates. I don't think it's hard for someone to maintain or understand, especially if you're talking about constraints that don't involve adding a lot of subqueries or extra tables to the FROM clause.
One thing to consider: If this system is primarily an offline one (in other words, not constantly being updated or inserted into - populated by periodic loads of bulk data), you may want to look into using BITMAP indexes. Bitmap indexes differ from regular b-tree indexes in that multiple indexes on a single table can be used simultaneously, and bitmap indexes are much, much smaller on disk than b-trees. They work very well for applications like this - where you will have a variety of constraints that can't be defined at design time. You will only want to put bitmap indexes on columns that have relatively few distinct values - say, one value constitutes no less than 1/1000 of the table - so don't use bitmaps on unique columns.
However, the downside is that bitmap indexes will noticeably degrade the performance of inserts and updates. The best practice for bitmaps is to use them in data warehouse applications, and they are dropped prior to loads and recreated afterwards.
Except in very particular cases, I don't think it is advisable (or even possible) to try to generate an optimized query. My advice is not to use dynamic SQL if you can : hard to read, hard to debug, hard to optimize, hard to maintain.
First, write a generic query that will work with any parameter sent to your procedure. According to your example, that would give something like :
SELECT * FROM table WHERE ((v_name IS NULL) OR (table.Name=v_name));
As you see, you could easily add other parameters to this query without using dynamic SQL. This query is much easier to read and debug. Ask your DBA for optimization tips.
Then, if you have a particular set of parameters that you know are often passed together, you could write a particular query for this set that you could specifically optimize. Pseudocode :
IF particular_set
THEN
/* Specific query */
ELSE
/* Generic query */
END IF;
The difficult part is to try not to have too many specific queries here, or you could fall into a maintenance hell.
We've had a similar requirement for one of our clients. They have half a dozen tables with millions of rows, and they wanted adhoc search capability on most of the columns.
The solution was a separate package for each table, which would take the search criteria and construct the SQL to run the search. We took advantage of the old system that was being replaced, to discover what the most common types of searches the users were doing, and made sure that those searches ran the best, by tuning the queries that were being generated (supported by the strategic use of indexes). Because each package was only responsible for queries against one table, it could have specific code designed to work with that table (including the odd hint, in a few rare cases).
One question/problem that you'll need to address is, do you hard-code the criteria (e.g. WHERE SURNAME='SMITH') or use bind variables? Using bind variables reduces hard parsing, which reduces load on the database server; however it can be impractical to use bind variables when the SQL is dynamically generated. The way we ended up going was to set CURSOR_SHARING=FORCE (which has its own disadvantages) which was a reasonable compromise in our case.
Read http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:6711305251199