Inconsistent results between remote and local query - tsql

I have an interesting case of results sets returned by SQL Server being different depending on whether a query is executed locally or remotely.
In essence, if I execute the following query:
SELECT p.ID AS Id
FROM csdb.users.People AS p
LEFT JOIN csdb.users.Accounts AS a ON p.ID = a.IdentityId
then the left join is performed, and I obtain 633 rows back. However, if I execute the query remotely as:
SELECT p.ID AS Id
FROM quantdb.csdb.users.People AS p
LEFT JOIN quantdb.csdb.users.Accounts AS a ON p.ID = a.IdentityId
then the left join is not performed, an index scan of the People table is performed, and only 564 records are returned. In essence it seems as if in the remote case the optimiser is saying 'well, you are not requiring any of the columns from the Accounts table so I won't do the join' whereas in the other case it is saying 'I will do the join'.
Is this difference in behaviour of the optimiser for remote and local queries a known 'feature' of SQL Server, or is this a bug?
We are using SQL Server 2008, SP1

Not doing the join is a valid optimization if there is a unique constraint on Accounts.IdentityId, because the join cannot add any new row (a non-unique column would cause p.ID to repeat for each corresponding duplicate in Accounts.IdentityId).
Can you post the exact schema of the tables, including all indexes and constraints? I want to see if it reproes.

Related

Joining too many tables makes Postgres query extremely slow

I've been trying to optimize this simple query on Postgres 12 that joins several tables to a base relation. They each have 1-to-1 relation and have anywhere from 10 thousand to 10 million rowss.
SELECT *
FROM base
LEFT JOIN t1 ON t1.id = base.t1_id
LEFT JOIN t2 ON t2.id = base.t2_id
LEFT JOIN t3 ON t3.id = base.t3_id
LEFT JOIN t4 ON t4.id = base.t4_id
LEFT JOIN t5 ON t5.id = base.t5_id
LEFT JOIN t6 ON t6.id = base.t6_id
LEFT JOIN t7 ON t7.id = base.t7_id
LEFT JOIN t8 ON t8.id = base.t8_id
LEFT JOIN t9 ON t9.id = base.t9_id
(the actual relations are a bit more complicated than this, but for demonstration purposes this is fine)
I noticed that the query is still very slow when I only do SELECT base.id which seems odd, because then query planner should know that the joins are unnecessary and shouldn't affect the performance.
Then I noticed that 8 seems to be some kind of magic number. If I remove any single one of the joins, the query time goes from 500ms to 1ms. With EXPLAIN I was able to see that Postgres is doing index only scans when joining 8 tables, but with 9 tables it starts doing sequential scans.
That's even when I only do SELECT base.id so somehow the amount of tables is tripping up the query planner.
We finally found out that there is indeed a configuration setting in postgres called join_collapse_limit, which is set to 8 by default.
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-query.html
The planner will rewrite explicit JOIN constructs (except FULL JOINs) into lists of FROM items whenever a list of no more than this many items would result. Smaller values reduce planning time but might yield inferior query plans. By default, this variable is set the same as from_collapse_limit, which is appropriate for most uses. Setting it to 1 prevents any reordering of explicit JOINs. Thus, the explicit join order specified in the query will be the actual order in which the relations are joined. Because the query planner does not always choose the optimal join order, advanced users can elect to temporarily set this variable to 1, and then specify the join order they desire explicitly.
After reading this article we decided to increase the limit, along with other values such as from_collapse_limit and geco_threshold. Beware that query planning time increases exponentially with the amount of joins, so the limit is there for a reason and should not be increased carelessly.

Quicksight query two tables has problem with left join

I have a bad result with using query in Quicksight.
I have one table with campaign, if I query just on this table, it is ok; I have all campaigns in my list. But when I use left join, i have just the results which match with join table.
Is this normal?
I have already tried all join possibilities and it is the same.

Postgresql get references from a dictionary

I'm trying to build a request to get the data from a table, but some of those columns have foreign keys I would like to replace by the associated keyword in one request.
Basically there's
table A with column 1:PKA-ID and column 2:name.
table B with column 1:PKB-ID, column 2:FKA-ID, column 3:amount.
I want to get all the lines in table B but with all foreign keys replaced by the associated names in table A.
I started building a request with a subrequest + alias to get that, but ofc I have more than one result per subrequest, yet I can't find a way to link that subrequest to the ID of table B [might be exhausted, dumb or both] from the main request. I did something like that:
SELECT (SELECT "NAME" FROM A JOIN B ON ID = FKA-ID) AS name, amount FROM TABLEB;
it feels so simple of a request yet...
You don't need a join in the subselect.
SELECT pkb_id,
(SELECT name FROM a WHERE a.pka_id = b.fka_id),
amount
FROM b;
(See it live in SQL Fiddle).
The subselect query runs for each and every row of its parent select and has the parent row available from the context.
You can also use a simple join.
SELECT b.pkb_id, a.name, b.amount
FROM b, a
WHERE a.pka_id = b.fka_id;
Note that the join version puts less restrictions on the PostgreSQL query optimizer so in some cases the join version might work faster. (For example, in PostgreSQL 9.6 the join might utilize multiple CPU units, cf. Parallel Query).

INNER JOIN, LEFT/RIGHT OUTER JOIN

Apology in advance for a long question, but doing this just for the sake of learning:
i'm new to SQL and researching on JOIN for now. I'm getting two different behaviors when using INNER and OUTER JOIN. What I know is, INNER JOIN gives an intersection kind of result while returning only common rows among tables, and (LEFT/RIGHT) OUTER JOIN is outputting what is common and remaining rows in LEFT or RIGHT tables, depending upon LEFT/RIGHT clause respectively.
While working with MS Training Kit and trying to solve this practice: "Practice 2: In this practice, you identify rows that appear in one table but have no matches in another. You are given a task to return the IDs of employees from the HR.Employees table who did not handle orders (in the Sales.Orders table) on February 12, 2008. Write three different solutions using the following: joins, subqueries, and set
operators. To verify the validity of your solution, you are supposed to return employeeIDs: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9."
I'm successful doing this with subqueries and set operators but with JOIN is returning something not expected. I've written the following query:
USE TSQL2012;
SELECT
E.empid
FROM
HR.Employees AS H
JOIN Sales.Orders AS O
ON H.empid = O.empid
AND O.orderdate = '20080212'
JOIN HR.Employees AS E
ON E.empid <> H.empid
ORDER BY
E.empid
;
I'm expecting results as: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9 (6 rows)
But what i'm getting is: 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,5,5,5,6,6,7,7,7,8,8,9,9,9 (24 rows)
I tried some videos but could not understand this side of INNER/OUTER JOIN. I'll be grateful if someone could help this side of JOIN, why is it so and what should I try to understand while working with JOIN.
you can also use left outer join to get not matching
*** The LEFT JOIN keyword returns all rows from the left table (table1), with the matching rows in the right table (table2). The result is NULL in the right side when there is no match.
SELECT
H.empid
FROM
HR.Employees AS H
LEFT OUTER JOIN Sales.Orders AS O
ON H.empid = O.empid
AND O.orderdate = '20080212'
WHERE O.empid IS NULL
Above script will return emp id who did not handle orders on specify date
here you can see all kind of join
Diagram taken from: http://dsin.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/sql-join-cheat-sheet/
adjust your query to be like this
USE TSQL2012;
SELECT
E.empid
FROM
HR.Employees AS H
JOIN Sales.Orders AS O
ON H.empid = O.empid
where O.orderdate = '2008-02-12' AND O.empid IN null
ORDER BY
E.empid
;
USE TSQL2012;
SELECT
distinct E.empid
FROM
HR.Employees AS H
JOIN Sales.Orders AS O
ON H.empid = O.empid
AND O.orderdate = '20080212'
JOIN HR.Employees AS E
ON E.empid <> H.empid
ORDER BY
E.empid
;
Primary things to always remind yourself when working with SQL JOINs:
INNER JOINs require a match in the join in order for result set rows produced prior to the INNER JOIN to remain in the result set. When no match is found for a row, the row is discarded from the result set.
For a row fed to an INNER JOIN that matches to ONLY one row, only one copy of that row fed to the result set is delivered.
For a row fed to an INNER JOIN that matches to multiple rows, the row will be delivered multiple times, once for each row match from the INNER JOIN table.
OUTER JOINs will not discard rows fed to them in the result set, whether or not the OUTER JOIN results in a match or not.
Just like INNER JOINs, if an OUTER JOIN matches to more than one row, it will increase the number of rows in the result set by duplicating rows equal to the number of rows matched from the OUTER JOIN table.
Ask yourself "if I get NO match on the JOIN, do I want the row discarded or not?" If the answer is NO, use an OUTER JOIN. If the answer is YES, use an INNER JOIN.
If you don't need to reference any of the columns from a JOIN table, don't perform a JOIN at all. Instead, use a WHERE EXISTS, WHERE NOT EXISTS, WHERE IN, WHERE NOT IN, etc. or similar, depending on your database engine in use. Don't rely on the database engine to be smart enough to discard unreferenced columns resulting from JOINs from the result set. Some databases may be smart enough to do that, some not. There's no reason to pull columns into a result set only to not reference them. Doing so increases chance of reduced performance.
Your JOIN of:
JOIN HR.Employees AS E
ON E.empid <> H.empid
...is matching to all Employees rows with a DIFFERENT EMPID to all rows fed to that join. Use of NOT EQUAL on an INNER JOIN is a very rare thing to do or need, especially if the JOIN predicate is testing only ONE condition. That is why your getting duplicate rows in the result set.
On DB2, we could perform an EXCEPTION JOIN to accomplish that using a JOIN alone. Normally, on DB2, I would use a WHERE NOT EXISTS for that. On SQL Server you could do a JOIN to a query where the query set is all employees without orders in SALES.ORDERS on the specified date, but I don't know if that violates the rules of your tutorial.
Naveen posted the solution it appears your tutorial is looking for!

DB2 Query Structure Using User-Defined Function as a Table

I'm a little new to DB2, and am having trouble developing a query. I have created a user-defined function that returns a table of data which I want to then join and select from in larger select statement. I'm working on a sensitive db, so the query below isn't what I'm literally running, but it's almost exactly like it (without the other 10 joins I have to do lol).
select
A.customerId,
A.firstname,
A.lastname,
B.orderId,
B.orderDate,
F.currentLocationDate,
F.currentLocation
from
customer A
INNER JOIN order B
on A.customerId = B.customerId
INNER JOIN table(getShippingHistory(B.customerId)) as F
on B.orderId = F.orderId
where B.orderId = 35
This works great if I run this query without the where clause (or some other where clause that doesn't check for an ID). When I include the where clause, I get the following error:
Error during Prepare 58004(-901)[IBM][CLI Driver][DB2/LINUXX8664]
SQL0901N The SQL statement failed because of a non-severe system
error. Subsequent SQL statements can be processed. (Reason "Bad Plan;
Unresolved QNC found".) SQLSTATE=58004
I have tracked the issue down to fact that I'm using one of join criteria for the parameters (B.customerId). I have validated this fact by replacing B.customerId with a valid customerId, and the query works great. Problem is, I don't know the customerId when calling this query. I know only the orderId (in this example).
Any thoughts on how to restructure this so I can make only 1 call to get all the info? I know the plan is the problem b/c the customerId isn't getting resolved before the function is called.
So if I understand correctly, the function getShippingHistory(customerId) returns a table.
And if you call it with a single customer Id that table gets joined in your query above no problem at all.
But the way you have the query written above, you are asking db2 to call the function for every row returned by your query (i.e. every b.customerId that matches your join and where conditions).
So I'm not sure what behaviour you are expecting, because what you're asking for is a table back for every row in your query, and db2 (nor I) can figure out what the result is supposed to look like.
So in terms of restructuring your query, think about how you can change the getShippingHistory logic when multiple customer Ids are involved.
i found the best solution (given the current query structure) is to use a LEFT join instead of an INNER join in order force the LEFT part of the join to happen which will resolve the customerId to a value by the time it gets to the function call.
select
A.customerId,
A.firstname,
A.lastname,
B.orderId,
B.orderDate,
F.currentLocationDate,
F.currentLocation
from
customer A
INNER JOIN order B
on A.customerId = B.customerId
LEFT JOIN table(getShippingHistory(B.customerId)) as F
on B.orderId = F.orderId
where B.orderId = 35