Do you remember the number one toy you always wanted but never could have as a kid? Allen’s favorite is the Millennium Falcon. What was the toy you always wanted? Did it make the list?
Free Azure and SQL Server Training in Austin, Texas!
On Saturday, March 9, 2024, SQL Saturday will be coming to Austin, Texas. This is a free training day around SQL Server, Azure, and the Microsoft Data Platform. If you would like lunch to be provided, it’s $20. We will also have two all-day deep dive training classes on performance tuning and Microsoft Analytics on Friday, March 8, 2024, for $125.
Need a Data Architect?
Have you got questions? Need some help? Are you curious to know the cost of procuring a Remote Data Architect?
Free Azure and SQL Server Training in Austin, Texas!
On Saturday, March 9, 2024, SQL Saturday will be coming to Austin, Texas. This is a free day of training around SQL Server, Azure, and the Microsoft Data Platform. If you would like lunch to be provided, it’s $20. We will also have two all-day deep dive training classes on performance tuning and Microsoft Analytics on Friday, March 8, 2024, for $125.
Need a Data Architect?
Have you got questions? Need some help? Are you curious to know the cost of procuring a Remote Data Architect?
Every so often, when a new cumulative update (CU) comes out for SQL Server, I like to see what system objects are new and which ones have changed. With the cumulative SQL Server 2022 update eleven this month, I noticed some exciting views not documented in the release notes. I figured I would blog about them and the process I used to identify them. If you didn’t look at the title of this post, they are related to external governance 🙂
New Views In SQL Server 2022 CU11
Don’t just take my word for it. Here are the new views added. Here is an image showing new or modified views. A little later, I will show you how you can find these yourself below.
How to Find New or Updated Objects with Cumulative Updates
In this six-minute video, I explain cumulative updates with SQL Server. More importantly, I will show you how I get nosy and check whether views or modules were added or changed.
Learn why Cumulative Updates are important and how they benefit you. Also, learn how to be a detective and see if other updates occurred that might be missing in the release notes.
How Do I Know When Cumulative Updates Are Released?
Here is a script I would use to pull data after applying the update. You can pull more or less, but here is some of the data I looked at to see what has changed in the system views and objects.
use [procuresql]
go
-- New Minor verision number for SQL 2022 CU11 is 4105 --
CREATE SCHEMA [4105] AUTHORIZATION dbo;
GO
USE [master];
go
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].all_sql_modules From sys.all_sql_modules
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].all_views FROM sys.all_views
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].all_columns FROM sys.all_columns
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].all_objects FROM sys.all_objects
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].all_parameters FROM sys.all_parameters
SELECT * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].assemblies FROM sys.assemblies
SELECT * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].assembly_files FROM sys.assembly_files
SELECT * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].assembly_modules FROM sys.assembly_modules
SELECT * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].assembly_references FROM sys.assembly_references
SELECT * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].assembly_types FROM sys.assembly_types
SELECT * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].asymmetric_keys FROM sys.asymmetric_keys
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].spt_values from master.dbo.spt_values
use [msdb]
go
select * INTO [ProcureSQL].[4105].mssqldb_views from sys.views
order by name
Suppose you pulled the same System data for cumulative update ten (CU10), minor number 4035, before applying the cumulative update eleven. We could compare the differences between the modules, views, objects, etc…
Using the free data comparison we provided in a previous blog post, we can see modules that are either new, removed, or changed between CU11 and CU10.
/* What modules are new or different? */
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #tmp1
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #tmp2
SELECT o.name AS ObjName, o.[type_desc]
INTO #tmp1
FROM [4105].all_sql_modules m join [4105].all_objects o on m.object_id=o.object_id
EXCEPT
SELECT o.name AS ObjName, o.[type_desc]
FROM [4035].all_sql_modules m join [4035].all_objects o on m.object_id=o.object_id
SELECT o.name AS ObjName, o.[type_desc]
INTO #tmp2
FROM [4035].all_sql_modules m join [4035].all_objects o on m.object_id=o.object_id
EXCEPT
SELECT o.name AS ObjName, o.[type_desc]
FROM [4105].all_sql_modules m join [4105].all_objects o on m.object_id=o.object_id
SELECT ObjName, [type_desc] FROM #tmp1
UNION ALL
SELECT ObjName, [type_desc] FROM #tmp2
order by ObjName
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #tmp1
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS #tmp2
What is External Governance?
Good question; if you look at the image above, you will notice several new Microsoft shipped views (is_ms_shipped = 1). These views are related to external governance.
My educated guess is that you can add or import external 3rd party sources to help you discover, classify, label & report the sensitive data in your databases. Here is a guide if you are new to data discovery and clarification with SQL Server.
Hopefully, everyone is back into the swing of things as we are in the middle of week three of 2024! Here are some videos, tips, and interesting links we have viewed at Procure SQL.
The Feature That Should Have Been Scrapped
If you take anything away from reading this newsletter, please make sure you don’t have xp_cmdshell enabled. Once again, it was used in multiple attacks!
Free Azure and SQL Server Training in Austin, Texas!
On Saturday, March 9, 2024, SQL Saturday will be coming to Austin, Texas. This is a free day of training around SQL Server, Azure and the Microsoft Data Platform. If you would like lunch to be provided, it’s $20. We will also have two different all-day deep dive training classes on performance tuning and Microsoft Fabric on Friday, March 8, 2024, for $125.
Need a Data Architect?
Have you got questions? Need some help? Are you curious to know the cost of procuring a Remote Data Architect?
Hopefully, everyone is back into the swing of things as we are in the middle of week two of 2024! Here are some videos, tips, and interesting links we have viewed at Procure SQL.
Free Government Data
Russ Loski helps us understand why data that has changed in 2023 might relate to data you do not have.
This week, John asked, “Can you query data inside a lakehouse using SQL Server Management Studio?
Yes, did you know you could query your data inside a Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse with SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio)? John didn’t so Justin Cunninham shows you how to leverage SSMS with your data in four minutes In this data architect tip.
If you find yourself needing some Data Architect as a service contact us. If you enjoyed this video, sign up for our newsletter.
https://procuresql.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Procure-SQL-Do-I-need-a-Backup-System-Database-1-1.jpg5631090Justin Cunningham/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Data-Architecture-as-a-Service-with-ProcureSQL.pngJustin Cunningham2024-01-10 05:22:272024-01-10 05:22:27Query your Lakehouse in Fabric with SSMS
Identify, Analyze and Fix database bad coding practices. FYI, this feature doesn’t come with the free open-source database platforms. 🙂
The Cost of Downtime
ITIC’s Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability Survey found 91% of respondents estimate that one hour of downtime costs over $301,000. How much does your business loose if it’s down for an hour?
In the beginning of my IT career, I was a developer. I wrote a lot of bad code that didn’t perform well. As more data entered my tables my stored procedures got slower and slower. More data, more problems! I started my career in performance tuning by making my crappy code a little less crappy. Therefore, I wanted to share with you an extended event added in SQL Server 2022 to help you identify some bad coding practices in your code that is also known as query anti-patterns.
Query Anti-Pattern’s Video
In the following video, you can learn how to capture query anti-patterns via Extended Events. Once you have found them, you can aggregate them to find the most occurring offenders or the offenders causing the most harm!
First, we will need to create an index we will use for our implicit conversion demo. If this index already exists, we will drop it.
USE [WideWorldImporters]
GO
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS [idx_Invoices_PurchaseOrder] ON [Sales].[Invoices]
GO
/****** Create Index for Anit-Pattern Implicit Conversion Demo ******/
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [idx_Invoices_PurchaseOrder] ON [Sales].[Invoices]
(
[CustomerPurchaseOrderNumber] ASC
)
WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF,
DROP_EXISTING = OFF, ONLINE = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON,
OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY = OFF) ON [USERDATA]
GO
Create Query Anti-Pattern Extended Event
Next, we will create our extended event used to capture the query anti-pattern. If it exists, we will drop it before creating the extended event.
/***** Create Extended Event *****/
IF EXISTS (SELECT name FROM sys.dm_xe_sessions WHERE name = 'query_antipattern')
DROP EVENT SESSION [query_antipattern] ON SERVER
GO
CREATE EVENT SESSION [query_antipattern] ON SERVER
ADD EVENT sqlserver.query_antipattern(
ACTION(sqlserver.session_id, sqlserver.client_app_name,sqlserver.client_hostname
,sqlserver.database_name,sqlserver.query_hash,sqlserver.query_plan_hash,
sqlserver.sql_text,sqlserver.username))
ADD TARGET package0.ring_buffer(SET max_events_limit=(0),max_memory=(51200))
WITH (MAX_MEMORY=4096 KB,EVENT_RETENTION_MODE=ALLOW_SINGLE_EVENT_LOSS,
MAX_DISPATCH_LATENCY=30 SECONDS,MAX_EVENT_SIZE=0 KB,MEMORY_PARTITION_MODE=NONE,
TRACK_CAUSALITY=OFF,STARTUP_STATE=ON)
GO
-- Start Extended Event
ALTER EVENT SESSION [query_antipattern] ON SERVER STATE = START;
GO
QDS and Plan Cache Cleanup
Before we start, we will want to clear out or query store data and execution plans in cache. NOTE: Only do this in non-production. We shouldn’t be testing demo’s in production.
/* Start the Demo by puring plans and QDS */
USE [WideWorldImporters]
GO
ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION CLEAR PROCEDURE_CACHE;
ALTER DATABASE [WideWorldImporters] SET QUERY_STORE CLEAR
GO
What are query anti-patterns?
What are query anti-patterns? Great question. I like Andreas Schörghuber’s definition .. “Anti-patterns are common solutions to ineffective problems and cause more problems than they solve.” [1] In simpler terms, a query is written to get the correct data but consumes more reads, CPU or duration than rewriting the query to get the same results in a way that allows the query optimizer to utilize less reads, CPU or duration.
SQL Server’s Extended Events map values also lets you know which anti-patterns can be captured by the query_antipattern event.
/* What types of query_antipatterns are included? */
SELECT map_value
FROM sys.dm_xe_map_values
WHERE name = N'query_antipattern_type';
Below are the query anti-patterns included in the extended event as of SQL Server 2022 CU 10.
Start Query Anti-Pattern’s Demo
Finally, we can now utilize that index we created to go over our query anti-pattern example.
Implicit Conversion AKA ConvertPreventingSeek
In this example, we a have a simple query. As you can see in the video above. The column is NVARCHAR (20) but the predicate filter is INTEGER data type. The following image should help you visualize the data type mismatch.
The query has to convert the data in CustomerPurchaseOrderNumber column to integer to utilize the filter.
/*
Examine what an implicit conversion is and
how it will hurt performance!
*/
SELECT InvoiceID
FROM [Sales].[Invoices]
WHERE [CustomerPurchaseOrderNumber]=17913
If you look at the live data of the extended event we added. You will see the following data collected.
Fix Implicit Conversion Query Anti-Pattern
This fix isn’t magic. It’s actually quite simple. You just have to make the data type of the predicate filter match the data type of the column.
/* How to fix an implicit conversion?
Change the data type to match the column.
*/
SELECT InvoiceID
FROM [Sales].[Invoices]
WHERE [CustomerPurchaseOrderNumber]=N'17913'
Large Number of In Predicate
For our next query anti-pattern we will focus on an IN statement that has too many values.
/* Long List of IN Statements.
Do we get alerts for both IN statements and Convert? */
SELECT *
FROM Sales.Invoices
WHERE CustomerPurchaseOrderNumber IN (12126,15342,12211,17129,10369,
13383,17913,14518,17577,18030,17639,10941,16374,17521,11911,10690,
10255,13260,16825,12227,16070,16793,12467,13700,11503,13916,17783,
13042,10411,15084,14159,11389,12559,19457,18468,14486,19057,18036,
13079,19402,15267,12781,17334,16645,17591,14618,19857,17849,10947,
11610,14853,10821,15491,14474,10079,11612,11991,19321,10210,14970,
17468,11643,16411,19525,10996,16474,15832,12134,13630,14902,15212,
19609,19809,13551,12805,18797,11553,11156,18583,19122,11615,12262,
10310,19254,13954,13960,14630,18585,18834,18451,19842,18893,13004,
19890,12941,13508,15403,19391,17938,19140,16362,18795,16388,18492,
15272,14938,13868,18901,15236,19782,11134,10182,18651,14169,18514,
18108,17328,13949,12727,17486,13783,15165,17627,13215,18992,10815,
17466,12153,16275,10695,14744,12253,13328,18450,12232,19473,14441,
19357,19208,14194,14468,16930,14270,13096,19458,13731,14609,17253,
13190,16905)
A good question you might be wondering is which query anti-pattern will this query return. Is it the previous TypeConvertPreventingSeek or LargeNumberOfOrINPredicate?
If you cleared the Live Data Viewer for your extended event you will notice that its actually both anti-patterns. In the screen shot below I put a box around the query_hash so you know its the same unique query text. I also include the session_id and timestamp as well.
Fix Large Number of In Predicate
Now there are multiple ways on how you can convert this massive IN clause into joining to a Temp Table, Table Variable, Table-Valued Parameters, etc. I will leave up which one is best for another day. Today, we are going to use the Table-Valued Parameter.
NOTE: I am creating and dropping the table type in the demo code because this is a demo. Usually, you might have a table type per common data type filter you might use.
SECOND NOTE: Hopefully, you will see we also converted the list of integers into a list of NVARCHAR values.This also removes the Implicit Conversion query anti-pattern.
/* How to fix this anti-pattern? */
DROP TYPE IF EXISTS KeyList;
GO
CREATE TYPE KeyList AS TABLE (
KeyValue NVARCHAR(50)
)
GO
DECLARE @Values KeyList
INSERT INTO @Values VALUES (N'12126'),(N'15342'),(N'12211'),(N'17129'),(N'10369'),(N'13383'),(N'17913'),(N'14518'),(N'17577'),(N'18030'),(N'17639'),(N'10941'),(N'16374'),(N'17521'),(N'11911'),(N'10690'),(N'10255'),(N'13260'),(N'16825'),(N'12227'),(N'16070'),(N'16793'),(N'12467'),(N'13700'),(N'11503'),(N'13916'),(N'17783'),(N'13042'),(N'10411'),(N'15084'),(N'14159'),(N'11389'),(N'12559'),(N'19457'),(N'18468'),(N'14486'),(N'19057'),(N'18036'),(N'13079'),(N'19402'),(N'15267'),(N'12781'),(N'17334'),(N'16645'),(N'17591'),(N'14618'),(N'19857'),(N'17849'),(N'10947'),(N'11610'),(N'14853'),(N'10821'),(N'15491'),(N'14474'),(N'10079'),(N'11612'),(N'11991'),(N'19321'),(N'10210'),(N'14970'),(N'17468'),(N'11643'),(N'16411'),(N'19525'),(N'10996'),(N'16474'),(N'15832'),(N'12134'),(N'13630'),(N'14902'),(N'15212'),(N'19609'),(N'19809'),(N'13551'),(N'12805'),(N'18797'),(N'11553'),(N'11156'),(N'18583'),(N'19122'),(N'11615'),(N'12262'),(N'10310'),(N'19254'),(N'13954'),(N'13960'),(N'14630'),(N'18585'),(N'18834'),(N'18451'),(N'19842'),(N'18893'),(N'13004'),(N'19890'),(N'12941'),(N'13508'),(N'15403'),(N'19391'),(N'17938'),(N'19140'),(N'16362'),(N'18795'),(N'16388'),(N'18492'),(N'15272'),(N'14938'),(N'13868'),(N'18901'),(N'15236'),(N'19782'),(N'11134'),(N'10182'),(N'18651'),(N'14169'),(N'18514'),(N'18108'),(N'17328'),(N'13949'),(N'12727'),(N'17486'),(N'13783'),(N'15165'),(N'17627'),(N'13215'),(N'18992'),(N'10815'),(N'17466'),(N'12153'),(N'16275'),(N'10695'),(N'14744'),(N'12253'),(N'13328'),(N'18450'),(N'12232'),(N'19473'),(N'14441'),(N'19357'),(N'19208'),(N'14194'),(N'14468'),(N'16930'),(N'14270'),(N'13096'),(N'19458'),(N'13731'),(N'14609'),(N'17253'),(N'13190'),(N'16905')
select *
FROM Sales.Invoices
JOIN @Values Tst on (Tst.KeyValue = CustomerPurchaseOrderNumber)
GO
Query Anti-Pattern Wrap Up
It’s now easier than before, to find your top offending anti-patterns. Just create the extended event and aggregate the results.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
