Michael J. Swart

October 28, 2020

Detect Excessive Spinlock Contention on SQL Server

Scaling SQL Server High
The beginning of the school year is behind us and what a semester start! 2020 has been tough on many of us and I’m fortunate to work for a company whose services are in such high demand. In fact we’ve seen some scaling challenges like we’ve never seen before. I want to talk about some of them.

Context

As we prepared to face unprecedented demand this year, we began to think about whether bigger is better. Worried about CPU limits, we looked to what AWS had to offer in terms of their instance sizes.

We were already running our largest SQL Servers on r5 instances with 96 logical CPUs. But we decided to evaluate the pricy u instances which have 448 logical CPUs and a huge amount of memory.

Painful Symptoms

Well, bigger is not always better. We discovered that as we increased the load on the u-series servers, there would come a point where all processors would jump to 100% and stayed there. You could say it plateaued (based on the graph, would that be a plateau? A mesa? Or a butte?)

Graph showing cpu plataued at 100%

When that occurred, the number of batch requests that the server could handle dropped significantly. So we saw more CPU use, but less work was getting done.

The high demand kept the CPU at 100% with no relief until the demand decreased. When that happened, the database seemed to recover. Throughput was restored and the database’s metrics became healthy again. During this trouble we looked at everything including the number of spins reported in the sys.dm_os_spinlock_stats dmv.

The spins and backoffs reported seemed extremely high, especially for the category “XVB_LIST”, but we didn’t really have a baseline to tell whether those numbers were problematic. Even after capturing the numbers and visualizing them we saw larger than linear increases as demand increased, but were those increases excessive?

How To Tell For Sure

Chris Adkin has a post Diagnosing Spinlock Problems By Doing The Math. He explains why spinlocks are useful. It doesn’t seem like a while loop that chews up CPU could improve performance, but it actually does when it helps avoid context switches. He gives a formula to help find how much of the total CPU is spent spinning. That percentage can then help decide whether the spinning is excessive.

But I made a tiny tweak to his formula and I wrote a script to have SQL Server do the math:

  • You still have to give the number of CPUs on your server. If you don’t have those numbers handy, you can get them from SQL Server’s log. I include one of Glenn Berry’s diagnostic queries for that.
  • There’s an assumption in Chris’s calculation that one spin consumes one CPU clock cycle. A spin is really cheap (because it can use the test-and-set instruction), but it probably consumes more than one clock cycle. I assume four, but I have no idea what the actual value is.
EXEC sys.xp_readerrorlog 0, 1, N'detected', N'socket';
-- SQL Server detected 2 sockets with 24 cores per socket ...
 
declare @Sockets int = 2;
declare @PhysicalCoresPerSocket int = 24;
declare @TicksPerSpin int = 4;
 
declare @SpinlockSnapshot TABLE ( 
    SpinLockName VARCHAR(100), 
    SpinTotal BIGINT
);
 
INSERT @SpinlockSnapshot ( SpinLockName, SpinTotal )
SELECT name, spins
FROM   sys.dm_os_spinlock_stats
WHERE  spins > 0;
 
DECLARE @Ticks bigint
SELECT @Ticks = cpu_ticks 
FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info
 
WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:10'
 
DECLARE @TotalTicksInInterval BIGINT
DECLARE @CPU_GHz NUMERIC(20, 2);
 
SELECT @TotalTicksInInterval = (cpu_ticks - @Ticks) * @Sockets * @PhysicalCoresPerSocket,
       @CPU_GHz = ( cpu_ticks - @Ticks ) / 10000000000.0
FROM sys.dm_os_sys_info;
 
SELECT ISNULL(Snap.SpinLockName, 'Total') as [Spinlock Name], 
       SUM(Stat.spins - Snap.SpinTotal) as [Spins In Interval],
       @TotalTicksInInterval as [Ticks In Interval],
       @CPU_Ghz as [Measured CPU GHz],
       100.0 * SUM(Stat.spins - Snap.SpinTotal) * @TicksPerSpin / @TotalTicksInInterval as [%]
FROM @SpinlockSnapshot Snap
JOIN sys.dm_os_spinlock_stats Stat
     ON Snap.SpinLockName = Stat.name
GROUP BY ROLLUP (Snap.SpinLockName)
HAVING SUM(Stat.spins - Snap.SpinTotal) > 0
ORDER BY [Spins In Interval] DESC;

This is what I see on a very healthy server (r5.24xlarge). The server was using 14% cpu. And .03% of that is spent spinning (or somewhere in that ballpark).

A screen shot showing an example of results

More Troubleshooting Steps

So what’s going on? What is that XVB_LIST category? Microsoft says “internal use only” But I can guess. Paul Randal talks about the related latch class Versioning Transaction List. It’s an instance-wide list that is used in the implementation of features like Read Committed Snapshot Isolation (RCSI) which we do use.

Microsoft also has a whitepaper on troubleshooting this stuff Diagnose and resolve spinlock contention on SQL Server. They actually give a technique to collect call stacks during spinlock contention in order to try and maybe glean some information about what else is going on. We did that, but we didn’t learn too much. We learned that we use RCSI with lots of concurrent queries. Something we really can’t give up on.

So Then What?

What We Did

Well, we moved away from the u instance with its hundreds of CPUs and we went back to our r5 instance with only (only!) 96 logical CPUs. We’re dealing with the limits imposed by that hardware and accepting that we can’t scale higher using that box. We’re continuing to do our darnedest to move data and activity out of SQL Server and into other solutions like DynamoDb. We’re also trying to partition our databases into different deployments which spreads the load out, but introduces a lot of other challenges.

Basically, we gave up trying to scale higher. If we did want to pursue this further (which we don’t), we’d probably contact Microsoft support to try and address this spinlock contention. We know that these conditions are sufficient (if not necessary) to see the contention we saw:

  • SQL Server 2016 SP2
  • U-series instance from Amazon
  • Highly concurrent and frequent queries (>200K batch requests per second with a good mix of writes and reads on the same tables)
  • RCSI enabled.

Thank you Erin Stellato

We reached out to Erin Stellato to help us through this issue. We did this sometime around the “Painful Symptoms” section above. We had a stressful time troubleshooting all this stuff and I really appreciate Erin guiding us through it. We learned so much.

October 19, 2020

How to Alter User Defined Table Types (Mostly) Online

Filed under: Miscelleaneous SQL,SQL Scripts,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 2:41 pm

Last year, Aaron Bertrand tackled the question, How To Alter User Defined Table Types. Aaron points out that “There is no ALTER TYPE, and you can’t drop and re-create a type that is in use”. Aaron’s suggestion was to create a new type and then update all procedure to use the new type.

I think I’ve got a bit of improvement based on sp_rename and sp_refreshmodule. Something that works well with

  • blue-green deployments,
  • both ad-hoc queries and procedures,
  • imperfectly understood schemas, like schemas that may have suffered from a little bit of schema drift.

Example

Say I have… I don’t know, let’s pick an example out of thin air. Say I have a simple table type containing one BIGINT column that I want to make memory optimized:

What I’ve Got

CREATE TYPE dbo.BigIntSet 
  AS TABLE ( 
    Value BIGINT NOT NULL INDEX IX_BigIntSet );

What I Want

CREATE TYPE dbo.BigIntSet 
  AS TABLE ( 
    Value BIGINT NOT NULL INDEX IX_BigIntSet )
  WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED=ON);

I can’t directly ALTER this table type, but I can do this three-card monte trick using sp_rename to put the BigIntSet in its place.

The Migration Script

IF NOT EXISTS (
  SELECT * 
  FROM sys.table_types
  WHERE name = 'BigIntSet' 
  AND is_memory_optimized = 1
)
BEGIN
 
  CREATE TYPE dbo.BigIntSet_MO 
    AS TABLE ( 
      Value bigint NOT NULL 
      INDEX IX_BigIntSet ) 
    WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED=ON);
 
  -- the switcheroo!
  EXEC sp_rename 'dbo.BigIntSet', 'zz_BigIntSet';
  EXEC sp_rename 'dbo.BigIntSet_MO', 'BigIntSet';
 
  --refresh modules
  DECLARE @Refreshmodulescripts TABLE (script nvarchar(max));
 
  INSERT @Refreshmodulescripts (script)
  SELECT 'EXEC sp_refreshsqlmodule ''' + QUOTENAME(referencing_schema_name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(referencing_entity_name) + ''';'
  FROM sys.dm_sql_referencing_entities('dbo.BigIntSet', 'TYPE');
 
  DECLARE @SQL NVARCHAR(MAX) = N'';
  SELECT @SQL = @SQL + script FROM @Refreshmodulescripts;
 
  EXEC sp_executesql @SQL;
 
END

But Is This Online?

Mostly. All queries that are in progress (whether ad-hoc or via procedures), continue to execute with no issues. However, there may be an issue with other queries that begin their execution during this migration.

If someone sends a query that uses the table type in the split second between the two sp_rename statements, then the query may fail.

If someone executes a procedure in the time between the first sp_rename and when sp_executesql gets around to refreshing that procedure, then the procedure may fail.

In practice, even on a busy server, I saw no such errors the few times I’ve tried this method, but of course, that’s no guarantee. In my case, even when refreshing close to 300 modules, this script takes about one second with no issues.

I actually tried adding a transaction around this whole migration script, and I did in fact see issues on a busy server. The schema modification lock that needs to be taken and held on all 300 objects was too much. It caused excessive blocking and I had to abandon that approach. In practice, I avoided trouble by ditching the explicit transaction.

January 28, 2020

What Tables Are Being Written To The Most?

Filed under: Miscelleaneous SQL,SQL Scripts,SQLServerPedia Syndication,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 10:38 am

You have excessive WRITELOG waits (or HADR_SYNC_COMMIT waits) and among other things, you want to understand where.

Microsoft’s advice Diagnosing Transaction Log Performance Issues and Limits of the Log Manager remains a great resource. They tell you to use perfmon to look at the log bytes flushed/sec counter (in the SQL Server:Databases object) to see which database is being written to so much.

After identifying a database you’re curious about, you may want to drill down further. I wrote about this problem earlier in Tackle WRITELOG Waits Using the Transaction Log and Extended Events. The query I wrote for that post combines results of an extended events session with the transaction log in order to identify which procedures are doing the most writing.

But it’s a tricky kind of script. It takes a while to run on busy systems. There’s a faster way to drill into writes if you switch your focus from which queries are writing so much to which tables are being written to so much. Both methods of drilling down can be helpful, but the table approach is faster and doesn’t require an extended event session and it might be enough to point you in the right direction.

Use This Query

use [specify your databasename here]
 
-- get the latest lsn for current DB
declare @xact_seqno binary(10);
declare @xact_seqno_string_begin varchar(50);
exec sp_replincrementlsn @xact_seqno OUTPUT;
set @xact_seqno_string_begin = '0x' + CONVERT(varchar(50), @xact_seqno, 2);
set @xact_seqno_string_begin = stuff(@xact_seqno_string_begin, 11, 0, ':')
set @xact_seqno_string_begin = stuff(@xact_seqno_string_begin, 20, 0, ':');
 
-- wait a few seconds
waitfor delay '00:00:10'
 
-- get the latest lsn for current DB
declare @xact_seqno_string_end varchar(50);
exec sp_replincrementlsn @xact_seqno OUTPUT;
set @xact_seqno_string_end = '0x' + CONVERT(varchar(50), @xact_seqno, 2);
set @xact_seqno_string_end = stuff(@xact_seqno_string_end, 11, 0, ':')
set @xact_seqno_string_end = stuff(@xact_seqno_string_end, 20, 0, ':');
 
WITH [Log] AS
(
  SELECT Category, 
         SUM([Log Record Length]) as [Log Bytes]
  FROM   fn_dblog(@xact_seqno_string_begin, @xact_seqno_string_end)
  CROSS  APPLY (SELECT ISNULL(AllocUnitName, Operation)) AS C(Category)
  GROUP  BY Category
)
SELECT   Category, 
         [Log Bytes],
         100.0 * [Log Bytes] / SUM([Log Bytes]) OVER () AS [%]
FROM     [Log]
ORDER BY [Log Bytes] DESC;

Results look something like this (Your mileage may vary).
A screenshot of the results

Notes

  • Notice that some space in the transaction log is not actually about writing to tables. I’ve grouped them into their own categories and kept them in the results. For example LOP_BEGIN_XACT records information about the beginning of transactions.
  • I’m using sp_replincrementlsn to find the current last lsn. I could have used log_min_lsn from sys.dm_db_log_stats but that dmv is only available in 2016 SP2 and later.
  • This method is a little more direct measurement of transaction log activity than a similar query that uses sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats

January 20, 2020

Watching SQL Server Stuff From Performance Monitor

Taking a small break from my blogging sabbatical to post one script that I’ve found myself writing from scratch too often.
My hope is that the next time I need this, I’ll look it up here.

The User Settable Counter

Use this to monitor something that’s not already exposed as a performance counter. Like the progress of a custom task or whatever. If you can write a quick query, you can expose it to a counter that can be plotted by Performance Monitor.

Here’s the script (adjust SomeMeasurement and SomeTable to whatever makes sense and adjust the delay interval if 1 second is too short:

declare @deltaMeasurement int = 0;
declare @totalMeasurement int = 0;
 
while (1=1)
begin
 
  select @deltaMeasurement = SomeMeasurement - @totalMeasurement
  from SomeTable;
 
  set @totalMeasurement += @deltaMeasurement;
 
  exec sp_user_counter1 @deltaMeasurement;
  waitfor delay '00:00:01'
end

Monitoring

Now you can monitor “User Counter 1” in the object “SQLServer:User Settable” which will look like this:
Example of monitoring a performance counter using Performance Monitor

Don’t forget to stop the running query when you’re done.

April 3, 2019

Finding Tables with Few Dependencies

Filed under: SQL Scripts,SQLServerPedia Syndication,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 10:00 am

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how to find lonely tables in Sql Server. This is a follow up to that post. I’m now going to talk about small sets of tables that are joined to eachother, but no-one else.

It’s Not Just Me
It seems everyone’s talking about this.

So as I was writing this post and code I noticed an amazing coincidence. I saw the same ideas I was writing about being discussed on twitter by Kelly Sommers, Ben Johnson and others.

They discuss Uber’s microservice graph. When visualized, it’s a big mish-mash of dependencies. Kelly points out how hard it is to reason about and Ben points to a small decoupled piece of the system that he wants to work on.

Me too Ben! And I think that’s the value of that visualization. It can demonstrate to others how tangled your system is. It can also identify small components that are not connected to the main mess. When I tie it to my last post and consider this idea in the database world, I can expand my idea of lonely tables to small sets of tables that are never joined to other tables.

I want to find them because these tables are also good candidates for extraction but how do I find them? I start by visualizing tables and their joins.

Visualizing Table Joins

I started by looking for existing visualizations. I didn’t find exactly what I wanted so I coded my own visualization (with the help of the d3 library). It’s always fun to code your own physics engine.

Here’s what I found

A monolith with some smaller isolated satellites

An example that might be good to extract

That ball of mush in the middle is hard to look at, but the smaller disconnected bits aren’t! Just like Ben, I want to work on those smaller pieces too! And just like the lonely tables we looked at last week, these small isolated components are also good candidates for extracting from SQL Server.

Try It Yourself

I’ve made this visualization available here:

https://michaeljswart.com/show_graph/show_graph.html

There’s a query at the end of this post. When you run it, you’ll get pairs of table names and when you paste it into the Show Graph page, you’ll see a visualization of your database.

(This is all client-side code, I don’t collect any data).

The Query

use [your database name goes here];
 
select
    qs.query_hash,
    qs.plan_handle,
    cast(null as xml) as query_plan
into #myplans
from sys.dm_exec_query_stats qs
cross apply sys.dm_exec_plan_attributes(qs.plan_handle) pa
where pa.attribute = 'dbid'
and pa.value = db_id();
 
with duplicate_queries as
(
    select ROW_NUMBER() over (partition by query_hash order by (select 1)) r
    from #myplans
)
delete duplicate_queries
where r > 1;
 
update #myplans
set query_plan = qp.query_plan
from #myplans mp
cross apply sys.dm_exec_query_plan(mp.plan_handle) qp
 
;WITH XMLNAMESPACES (DEFAULT 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2004/07/showplan'),
mycte as
(
    select q.query_hash,
           obj.value('(@Schema)[1]', 'sysname') AS schema_name,
           obj.value('(@Table)[1]', 'sysname') AS table_name
    from #myplans q
    cross apply q.query_plan.nodes('/ShowPlanXML/BatchSequence/Batch/Statements/StmtSimple') as nodes(stmt)
    CROSS APPLY stmt.nodes('.//IndexScan/Object') AS index_object(obj)
)
select query_hash, schema_name, table_name
into #myExecutions
from mycte
where schema_name is not null
and object_id(schema_name + '.' + table_name) in (select object_id from sys.tables)
group by query_hash, schema_name, table_name;
 
select DISTINCT A.table_name as first_table,
       B.table_name as second_table
from #myExecutions A
join #myExecutions B
on A.query_hash = B.query_hash
where A.table_name < B.table_name;

March 12, 2019

Lonely Tables in SQL Server

Filed under: SQL Scripts,SQLServerPedia Syndication,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 12:00 pm

Takeaway: I provide a script that looks at the procedure cache and reports tables that are never joined to other tables.

Recently, I’ve been working hard to reduce our use of SQL Server as much as possible. In other words, I’ve been doing some spring cleaning. I pick up a table in my hands and I look at it. If it doesn’t spark joy then I drop it.

If only it were that easy. That’s not quite the process I’m using. The specific goals I’m chasing are about reducing cost. I’m moving data to cheaper data stores when it makes sense.

So let’s get tidying. But where do I start?

Getting rid of SQL Server tables should accomplish a couple things. First, it should “move the needle”. If my goal is cost, then the tables I choose to remove should reduce my hardware or licensing costs in a tangible way. The second thing is that dropping the table is achievable without 10 years of effort. So I want to focus on “achievability” for a bit.

Achievable

What’s achievable? I want to identify tables to extract from the database that won’t take years. Large monolithic systems can have a lot of dependencies to unravel.

So what tables in the database have the least dependencies? How do I tell without a trustworthy data model? Is it the ones with the fewest foreign keys (in or out)? Maybe, but foreign keys aren’t always defined properly or they can be missing all together.

My thought is that if two tables are joined together in some query, then they’re related or connected in some fashion. So that’s my idea. I can look at the procedure cache of a database in production to see where the connections are. And when I know that, I can figure out what tables are not connected.

Lonely Tables

This script gives me set of tables that aren’t joined to any other table in any query in cache

use [your db name here];
 
SELECT qs.query_hash,
       qs.plan_handle,
       cast(null as xml) as query_plan
  INTO #myplans
  FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats qs
 CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_plan_attributes(qs.plan_handle) pa
 WHERE pa.attribute = 'dbid'
   AND pa.value = db_id();
 
WITH duplicate_queries AS
(
  SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY query_hash ORDER BY (SELECT 1)) n
  FROM #myplans
)
DELETE duplicate_queries
 WHERE n > 1;
 
UPDATE #myplans
   SET query_plan = qp.query_plan
  FROM #myplans mp
 CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(mp.plan_handle) qp;
 
WITH XMLNAMESPACES (DEFAULT 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2004/07/showplan'),
my_cte AS 
(
    SELECT q.query_hash,
           obj.value('(@Schema)[1]', 'sysname') AS [schema_name],
           obj.value('(@Table)[1]', 'sysname') AS table_name
      FROM #myplans q
     CROSS APPLY q.query_plan.nodes('/ShowPlanXML/BatchSequence/Batch/Statements/StmtSimple') as nodes(stmt)
     CROSS APPLY stmt.nodes('.//IndexScan/Object') AS index_object(obj)
)
SELECT query_hash, [schema_name], table_name
  INTO #myExecutions
  FROM my_cte
 WHERE [schema_name] IS NOT NULL
   AND OBJECT_ID([schema_name] + '.' + table_name) IN (SELECT object_id FROM sys.tables)
 GROUP BY query_hash, [schema_name], table_name;
 
WITH multi_table_queries AS
(
    SELECT query_hash
      FROM #myExecutions
     GROUP BY query_hash
    HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
),
lonely_tables as
(
    SELECT [schema_name], table_name
      FROM #myExecutions
    EXCEPT
    SELECT [schema_name], table_name
      FROM #myexecutions WHERE query_hash IN (SELECT query_hash FROM multi_table_queries)
)
SELECT l.*, ps.row_count
  FROM lonely_tables l
  JOIN sys.dm_db_partition_stats ps
       ON OBJECT_ID(l.[schema_name] + '.' + l.table_name) = ps.object_id
 WHERE ps.index_id in (0,1)
 ORDER BY ps.row_count DESC;

Caveats

So many caveats.
There are so many things that take away from the accuracy and utility of this script that I hesitated to even publish it.
Here’s the way I used the script. The list of tables was something that helped me begin an investigation. For me, I didn’t use it to give answers, but to generate questions. For example, taking each table in the list, I asked: “How hard would it be to get rid of table X and what would that save us?” I found it useful to consider those questions. Your mileage of course will vary.

October 26, 2018

Uncovering Hidden Complexity

Filed under: Miscelleaneous SQL,SQL Scripts,SQLServerPedia Syndication,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 12:15 pm

The other day, Erin Stellato asked a question on twitter about the value of nested SPs. Here’s how I weighed in:

Hidden complexity has given me many problems in the past. SQL Server really really likes things simple and so it’s nice to be able to uncover that complexity. Andy Yun has tackled this problem for nested views with his sp_helpexpandview.

Here’s what I came up with for nested anything. It helps unravel a tree of dependencies based on information found in sys.triggers and sys.dm_sql_referenced_entities. With it, you can see what’s involved when interacting with objects. Here’s what things look like for Sales.SalesOrderDetail in AdventureWorks2014. A lot of the resulting rows can be ignored, but there can be surprises in there too.

A lot in there

DECLARE @object_name SYSNAME = 'Sales.SalesOrderDetail';
 
WITH dependencies AS
(
    SELECT @object_name AS [object_name],
           CAST(
             QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(OBJECT_ID(@object_name))) + '.' + 
             QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID(@object_name)))
             as sysname) as [escaped_name],
           [type_desc],
           object_id(@object_name) AS [object_id],
           1 AS is_updated,
           CAST('/' + CAST(object_id(@object_name) % 10000 as VARCHAR(30)) + '/' AS hierarchyid) as tree,
           0 as trigger_parent_id
      FROM sys.objects 
     WHERE object_id = object_id(@object_name)
 
    UNION ALL
 
    SELECT CAST(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(o.[object_id]) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(o.[object_id]) as sysname),
           CAST(QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(o.[object_id])) + '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(o.[object_id])) as sysname),
           o.[type_desc],
           o.[object_id],
           CASE o.[type] when 'U' then re.is_updated else 1 end,
           CAST(d.tree.ToString() + CAST(o.[object_id] % 10000 as VARCHAR(30)) + '/' AS hierarchyid),
           0 as trigger_parent_id
      FROM dependencies d
     CROSS APPLY sys.dm_sql_referenced_entities(d.[escaped_name], default) re
      JOIN sys.objects o
           ON o.object_id = isnull(re.referenced_id, object_id(ISNULL(re.referenced_schema_name,'dbo') + '.' + re.referenced_entity_name))
     WHERE tree.GetLevel() < 10
       AND re.referenced_minor_id = 0
       AND o.[object_id] <> d.trigger_parent_id
       AND CAST(d.tree.ToString() as varchar(1000)) not like '%' + CAST(o.[object_id] % 10000 as varchar(1000)) + '%'
 
     UNION ALL
 
     SELECT CAST(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(t.[object_id]) + '.' + OBJECT_NAME(t.[object_id]) as sysname),
            CAST(QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(t.[object_id])) + '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(t.[object_id])) as sysname),
            'SQL_TRIGGER',
            t.[object_id],
            0 AS is_updated,
            CAST(d.tree.ToString() + CAST(t.object_id % 10000 as VARCHAR(30)) + '/' AS hierarchyid),
            t.parent_id as trigger_parent_id
       FROM dependencies d
       JOIN sys.triggers t
            ON d.[object_id] = t.parent_id
      WHERE d.is_updated = 1
        AND tree.GetLevel() < 10
        AND CAST(d.tree.ToString() as varchar(1000)) not like '%' + cast(t.[object_id] % 10000 as varchar(1000)) + '%'
)
SELECT replicate('—', tree.GetLevel() - 1) + ' ' + [object_name], 
       [type_desc] as [type],
       tree.ToString() as dependencies       
  FROM dependencies
 ORDER BY tree

April 6, 2018

Are There Any System Generated Constraint Names Lurking In Your Database?

Names for constraints are optional meaning that if you don’t provide a name when it’s created or cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you by the system.
These system provided names are messy things and I don’t think I have to discourage you from using them. Kenneth Fisher has already done that in Constraint names, Say NO to the default.

But how do you know whether you have any?

Here’s How You Check

SELECT SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id) AS [schema name],
       OBJECT_NAME(object_id) AS [system generated object name],
       OBJECT_NAME(parent_object_id) AS [parent object name],
       type_desc AS [object type]
  FROM sys.objects
 WHERE OBJECT_NAME(object_id) LIKE 
         type + '\_\_' + LEFT(OBJECT_NAME(parent_object_id),8) + '\_\_%' ESCAPE '\'
       OR
       OBJECT_NAME(object_id) LIKE 
          REPLACE(sys.fn_varbintohexstr(CAST(object_id AS VARBINARY(MAX))), '0x', '%\_\_') ESCAPE '\'

This will find all your messy system-named constraints.
For example, a table defined like this:

create table MY_TABLE
(
  id INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
  id2 INT REFERENCES MY_TABLE(id) DEFAULT 0,
  UNIQUE(id),
  CHECK (id >= 0)
)

Will give results like this:

Happy hunting.

Update: April 9, 2018
We can get this info from the system views a little easier as Rob Volk pointed out. I’ve also included the parent object’s type.

SELECT OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(id) AS [schema name],
       OBJECT_NAME(constid) AS [system generated constraint name],
       (select type_desc from sys.objects where object_id = constid) as [constraint type],
       OBJECT_NAME(id) AS [parent object name],
       (select type_desc from sys.objects where object_id = id) as [parent object type]
  FROM sys.sysconstraints
 WHERE status & 0x20000 > 0
   AND OBJECT_NAME(id) NOT IN (N'__RefactorLog', N'sysdiagrams')
 ORDER BY [parent object type], [parent object name], [system generated constraint name];

September 11, 2017

Remove SQL Junk (Brackets and Other Clutter)

Filed under: Miscelleaneous SQL,SQL Scripts,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 10:42 am

“Above all else, show the data” says Edwarde Tufte. He’s the data visualization expert who promotes a high data-ink ratio in data visualizations. He describes data-ink as “the non-erasable core of a graphic”. In other words, avoid chartjunk.

SQL Junk

I buy that. Less is More. And we can apply that idea to SQL. If SQL is going to be maintained by a human, it’s best to use a style that is easy on the reader. There’s a lot of syntax in SQL that is redundant. By keeping only the non-erasable syntax in SQL statements, the SQL gets easier to understand and maintain.

Square Brackets

I know I’m not the only one who thinks so. I was watching Kendra Little’s presentation SSMS Shortcuts & Secrets. When someone asked whether there was a shortcut for removing brackets. There isn’t. Most people search and replace “[” with “” and then do the same thing with “]”. Kendra wondered if there was a regular expression that allowed a user to do both. There is, but it’s awkward because brackets need to be escaped: [\[\]] (which is only slightly easier to remember than ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

SQL Junk in SSMS Generated Scripts

SSMS’s scripting engine is great at taking an object like a table and giving you a CREATE statement that will perfectly recreate what you need. But it’s a huge contributor of SQL Junk. I’ve seen so much SSMS-generated SQL get checked in to repositories that the style is assumed to be a best practice.

Here’s something that shows just how much SQL Junk can be removed. I think the resulting SQL is so much more clear and so much easier to maintain.

April 18, 2017

Find Your Dark Queries

Filed under: Miscelleaneous SQL,SQL Scripts,SQLServerPedia Syndication,Technical Articles — Michael J. Swart @ 11:36 am

My friend Josh came up with the term “dark queries”. Just like “dark matter”, dark queries can’t be detected directly, but their effect can still be observed. He’s talking about queries that aren’t stored in cache. If your monitoring solution relies heavily on the statistics of cached queries, then you may not be capturing all the activity on your server.

Obi-Wan never told you what happened to those queries

Some of my favorite monitoring solutions rely on the cached queries:

but some queries will fall out of cache or don’t ever make it into cache. Those are the dark queries I’m interested in today. Today let’s look at query recompiles to shed light on some of those dark queries that maybe we’re not measuring.

By the way, if you’re using SQL Server 2016’s query store then this post isn’t for you because Query Store is awesome. Query Store doesn’t rely on the cache. It captures all activity and stores queries separately – Truth in advertising!

High Recompile Rate?

If you work with a high-frequency transactional workload like I do, then you can’t afford the CPU required for frequent recompiles. If you have sustained recompiles larger than a few hundred per second, that’s probably too much. It’s easy to check. Use the performance monitor to take a look at the SQL Re-Compilations/sec counter which is found in SQLServer:SQL Statistics/sec.

Way too many recompiles

Drill Into Recompile Causes
You can drill into this a little further with an extended event session stored to a histogram like this:

CREATE EVENT SESSION Recompile_Histogram ON SERVER 
  ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_recompile
  ADD TARGET package0.histogram (
      SET filtering_event_name=N'sqlserver.sql_statement_recompile',
          source=N'recompile_cause',
          source_type=(0) );
 
ALTER EVENT SESSION Recompile_Histogram ON SERVER STATE = START;

Query it like this

SELECT sv.subclass_name as recompile_cause, 
       shredded.recompile_count
  FROM sys.dm_xe_session_targets AS xet  
  JOIN sys.dm_xe_sessions AS xe  
       ON (xe.address = xet.event_session_address)  
 CROSS APPLY ( SELECT CAST(xet.target_data as xml) ) as target_data_xml ([xml])
 CROSS APPLY target_data_xml.[xml].nodes('/HistogramTarget/Slot') AS nodes (slot_data)
 CROSS APPLY (
         SELECT nodes.slot_data.value('(value)[1]', 'int') AS recompile_cause,
                nodes.slot_data.value('(@count)[1]', 'int') AS recompile_count
       ) as shredded
  JOIN sys.trace_subclass_values AS sv
       ON shredded.recompile_cause = sv.subclass_value
 WHERE xe.name = 'Recompile_Histogram' 
   AND sv.trace_event_id = 37 -- SP:Recompile

To get results like this:
recompile_reasons

Infrequent Recompiles?

Even if you don’t have frequent recompiles, it’s important to know what’s going on in the server. On your OLTP database, I bet you’re reluctant to let those BI folks run their analytical queries whenever they want. They may try to hide their shenanigans with an OPTION(RECOMPILE) hint. This extended events captures those query recompiles. Be sure to only capture a small sample by having the session run for a small amount of time. Or you can use the histogram above to make sure that the frequency is low.

CREATE EVENT SESSION [DarkQueries] ON SERVER
  ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_recompile(
    ACTION(sqlserver.database_id,sqlserver.sql_text)
    WHERE ([recompile_cause]=(11))) -- Option (RECOMPILE) Requested
  ADD TARGET package0.event_file(SET filename=N'DarkQueries');
ALTER EVENT SESSION [DarkQueries] ON SERVER STATE = START;
GO

Take a look at the dark queries by executing this:

SELECT DarkQueryData.eventDate,
       DB_NAME(DarkQueryData.database_id) as DatabaseName,
       DarkQueryData.object_type,
       COALESCE(DarkQueryData.sql_text, 
                OBJECT_NAME(DarkQueryData.object_id, DarkQueryData.database_id)) command,
       DarkQueryData.recompile_cause
  FROM sys.fn_xe_file_target_read_file ( 'DarkQueries*xel', null, null, null) event_file_value
 CROSS APPLY ( SELECT CAST(event_file_value.[event_data] as xml) ) event_file_value_xml ([xml])
 CROSS APPLY (
         SELECT event_file_value_xml.[xml].value('(event/@timestamp)[1]', 'datetime') as eventDate,
                event_file_value_xml.[xml].value('(event/action[@name="sql_text"]/value)[1]', 'nvarchar(max)') as sql_text,
                event_file_value_xml.[xml].value('(event/data[@name="object_type"]/text)[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as object_type,
                event_file_value_xml.[xml].value('(event/data[@name="object_id"]/value)[1]', 'bigint') as object_id,
                event_file_value_xml.[xml].value('(event/data[@name="source_database_id"]/value)[1]', 'bigint') as database_id,
                event_file_value_xml.[xml].value('(event/data[@name="recompile_cause"]/text)[1]', 'nvarchar(100)') as recompile_cause
       ) as DarkQueryData
 ORDER BY eventDate DESC

This gives you results that look something like the following contrived example:
darkqueries

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