An Overlooked Benefit Of Batch Mode For Parallel Query Plans In SQL Server

Posted on by Erik Darling

Make It Count

When queries go parallel, you want them to be fast. Sometimes they are, and it’s great.

Other times they’re slow, and you end up staring helplessly at a repartition streams operator.

SQL Server Query Plan
brick wall

Sometimes you can reduce the problem with higher DOP hints, or better indexing, but overall it’s a crappy situation.

Snap To

Let’s admire a couple familiar looking queries, because that’s been working really well for us so far.

WITH Comments AS 
(
    SELECT
        ROW_NUMBER() 
            OVER(PARTITION BY 
                     c.UserId
                 ORDER BY 
                     c.CreationDate) AS n
    FROM dbo.Comments AS c
)
SELECT *
FROM Comments AS c
WHERE c.n = 0
OPTION(USE HINT('QUERY_OPTIMIZER_COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL_140'));

WITH Comments AS 
(
    SELECT
        ROW_NUMBER() 
            OVER(PARTITION BY 
                     c.UserId
                 ORDER BY 
                     c.CreationDate) AS n
    FROM dbo.Comments AS c
)
SELECT *
FROM Comments AS c
WHERE c.n = 0
OPTION(USE HINT('QUERY_OPTIMIZER_COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL_150'));

One is going to run in compatibility level 140, the other in 150, as foretold by ancient alien prophecy.

The two query plans will have a bit in common, but…

SQL Server Query Plan
just batch

The second query, which runs in batch mode, runs about 15 seconds faster. One big reason why is that we skip that most unfortunate repartition streams operator.

It’s a cold sore. An actual factual cold sore.

The only ways I’ve found to fix it completely are:

  • Induce batch mode
  • Use the parallel apply technique

But the parallel apply technique doesn’t help much here, because of local factors.

In this case, me generating the largest possible result set and then filtering it down to nothing at the end.

Thanks for reading!

Going Further

If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a 75% discount to my blog readers if you click from here. I’m also available for consulting if you just don’t have time for that and need to solve performance problems quickly.

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