Entity framework execution time - c#

I've noticed a massive difference in execution time with Entity Framework today. I would like to know why the first statement has so much overhead. For this query i'm retrieving 5500 trenddata values from the database (which shouldn't be a big deal).
This is the statement I used before:
TrendDataValues = new ObservableCollection<TrendDataValue>(_trendDataContext.TrendDatas.First(td => td.Id == argument.TrendDataId)
.TrendDataValues
.Where(tdv => tdv.ValueStartTimestamp >= argument.MinValue
&& tdv.ValueStartTimestamp <= argument.MaxValue));
However, this statement takes over 10 seconds to run.
I've rewritten the first statement to the following one. This retrieves the exact same data. However, this statement returns values within 0.2 seconds.
TrendDataValues = new ObservableCollection<TrendDataValue>(from td in _trendDataContext.TrendDatas.Where(d => d.Id == trendDataId)
from tdv in td.TrendDataValues
where tdv.ValueStartTimestamp >= argument.MinValue
&& tdv.ValueEndTimestamp <= argument.MaxValue
select tdv);
Can somebody clarify the difference between the 2 statements?

Suggestion: download http://www.linqpad.net/
Connect LINQ-pad to your database.
Run the two queries and take a look at the SQL tab to see if there is a difference in the SQL that is generated by the queries.
Hope this helps!

Chained method or query syntax if they are the same the resulting sql will be identical, it seems at first glance that in the second example you are implicitly creating a join, i.e. the two from / where statements will act similar to an inner join, whereas in the first you do not and are probably creating some form of cartesian product that the chained methods will have to search.
As the other dood suggests go use LinqPad and check out the sql generated, i bet it's not the same.
P.S. Effectively the 2nd example would actually take longer to compile! but if both examples were logically identical then method and query syntax would be the same execution speed.

As adviced in the answers above, I've tested both queries in linqpad.
The first one runs the following query:
SELECT TOP (1) [t0].[Id], [t0].[Tag], [t0].[Description], [t0].[PollingInterval], [t0].[Compression], [t0].[PlcLogDataTypeValue]
FROM [TrendDatas] AS [t0]
WHERE [t0].[Id] = #p0
The second one runs the following query:
SELECT [t1].[Id], [t1].[ValueStartTimestamp], [t1].[ValueEndTimestamp], [t1].[Value], [t1].[SerieNumber], [t1].[TrendData_Id]
FROM [TrendDatas] AS [t0], [TrendDataValues] AS [t1]
WHERE ([t1].[ValueStartTimestamp] >= #p0) AND ([t1].[ValueStartTimestamp] <= #p1) AND ([t0].[Id] = #p2) AND ([t1].[TrendData_Id] = [t0].[Id])
Apparently the first statement only returns the trenddata-parent object. I guessing how it's iterating over it's values (child elements), since I don't see a query or join referencing the TrendDataValues table, but i'm guessing this isn't going to be pretty.
The second query returns a better result which matches exactly what i'm asking.
Thanks for your support and +1 for the answers!

Related

Using both LINQ query syntax and LINQ method syntax [duplicate]

I read this article:
Logical Processing Order of the SELECT statement
in end of article has been write ON and JOIN clause consider before WHERE.
Consider we have a master table that has 10 million records and a detail table (that has reference to master table(FK)) with 50 million record. We have a query that want just 100 record of detail table according a PK in master table.
In this situation ON and JOIN execute before WHERE?I mean that do we have 500 million record after JOIN and then WHERE apply to it?or first WHERE apply and then JOIN and ON Consider? If second answer is true do it has incoherence with top article?
thanks
In the case of an INNER JOIN or a table on the left in a LEFT JOIN, in many cases, the optimizer will find that it is better to perform any filtering first (highest selectivity) before actually performing whatever type of physical join - so there are obviously physical order of operations which are better.
To some extent you can sometimes control this (or interfere with this) with your SQL, for instance, with aggregates in subqueries.
The logical order of processing the constraints in the query can only be transformed according to known invariant transformations.
So:
SELECT *
FROM a
INNER JOIN b
ON a.id = b.id
WHERE a.something = something
AND b.something = something
is still logically equivalent to:
SELECT *
FROM a
INNER JOIN b
ON a.id = b.id
AND a.something = something
AND b.something = something
and they will generally have the same execution plan.
On the other hand:
SELECT *
FROM a
LEFT JOIN b
ON a.id = b.id
WHERE a.something = something
AND b.something = something
is NOT equivalent to:
SELECT *
FROM a
LEFT JOIN b
ON a.id = b.id
AND a.something = something
AND b.something = something
and so the optimizer isn't going to transform them into the same execution plan.
The optimizer is very smart and is able to move things around pretty successfully, including collapsing views and inline table-valued functions as well as even pushing things down through certain kinds of aggregates fairly successfully.
Typically, when you write SQL, it needs to be understandable, maintainable and correct. As far as efficiency in execution, if the optimizer is having difficulty turning the declarative SQL into an execution plan with acceptable performance, the code can sometimes be simplified or appropriate indexes or hints added or broken down into steps which should perform more quickly - all in successive orders of invasiveness.
It doesn't matter
Logical processing order is always honoured: regardless of actual processing order
INNER JOINs and WHERE conditions are effectively associative and commutative (hence the ANSI-89 "join in the where" syntax) so actual order doesn't matter
Logical order becomes important with outer joins and more complex queries: applying WHERE on an OUTER table changes the logic completely.
Again, it doesn't matter how the optimiser does it internally so long as the query semantics are maintained by following logical processing order.
And the key word here is "optimiser": it does exactly what it says
Just re-reading Paul White's excellent series on the Query Optimiser and remembered this question.
It is possible to use an undocumented command to disable specific transformation rules and get some insight into the transformations applied.
For (hopefully!) obvious reasons only try this on a development instance and remember to re-enable them and remove any suboptimal plans from the cache.
USE AdventureWorks2008;
/*Disable the rules*/
DBCC RULEOFF ('SELonJN');
DBCC RULEOFF ('BuildSpool');
SELECT P.ProductNumber,
P.ProductID,
I.Quantity
FROM Production.Product P
JOIN Production.ProductInventory I
ON I.ProductID = P.ProductID
WHERE I.ProductID < 3
OPTION (RECOMPILE)
You can see with those two rules disabled it does a cartesian join and filter after.
/*Re-enable them*/
DBCC RULEON ('SELonJN');
DBCC RULEON ('BuildSpool');
SELECT P.ProductNumber,
P.ProductID,
I.Quantity
FROM Production.Product P
JOIN Production.ProductInventory I
ON I.ProductID = P.ProductID
WHERE I.ProductID < 3
OPTION (RECOMPILE)
With them enabled the predicate is pushed right down into the index seek and so reduces the number of rows processed by the join operation.
There is no defined order. The SQL engine determines what order to perform the operations based on the execution strategy chosen by its optimizer.
I think you have misread ON as IN in the article.
However, the order it is showing in the article is correct (obviously it is msdn anyway). The ON and JOIN are executed before WHERE naturally because WHERE has to be applied as a filter on the temporary resultset obtained due to JOINS
The article just says it is logical order of execution and also at end of the paragraph it adds this line too ;)
"Note that the actual physical execution of the statement is determined by the query processor and the order may vary from this list."

.netcore EF linq - this is a BUG? Very strange behavior

I have two table in sql. Document and User. Document have relation to User and I want to get users that I sent document recently.
I need to sort by the date document was sent and get unique (distinct) user with relation to this document
This is my linq queries
var recentClients = documentCaseRepository.Entities
.Where(docCase => docCase.AssignedByAgentId == WC.UserContext.UserId)
.OrderByDescending(userWithDate => userWithDate.LastUpdateDate)
.Take(1000) // I need this because if I comment this line then EF generate completely different sql query.
.Select(doc => new { doc.AssignedToClient.Id, doc.AssignedToClient.FirstName, doc.AssignedToClient.LastName })
.Distinct()
.Take(configuration.MaxRecentClientsResults)
.ToList();
and generated sql query is:
SELECT DISTINCT TOP(5) [t].*
FROM (
SELECT TOP(1000) [docCase.AssignedToClient].[Id]
FROM [DocumentCase] AS [docCase]
INNER JOIN [User] AS [docCase.AssignedToClient]
ON ([docCase].[AssignedToClientId] = [docCase.AssignedToClient].[Id])
WHERE [docCase].[AssignedByAgentId] = 3
ORDER BY [docCase].[LastUpdateDate] DESC
)
AS [t]
Every thing is correct for now. But if I delete this line
.Take(1000) // I need this because...
EF generated completely different query such as:
SELECT DISTINCT TOP(5)
[docCase.AssignedToClient].[Id]
FROM [DocumentCase] AS [docCase]
INNER JOIN [User] AS [docCase.AssignedToClient]
ON ([docCase].[AssignedToClientId] = [docCase.AssignedToClient].[Id])
WHERE [docCase].[AssignedByAgentId] = 3
My question is: why EF not generated orderby clause and subquery with distinct?
This is a BUG EF or I'm doing something wrong? And what I must do to generate in linq this sql query ()
SELECT DISTINCT TOP 5 [t].*
FROM ( SELECT [docCase.AssignedToClient].[Id]
FROM [DocumentCase] AS [docCase]
INNER JOIN [User] AS [docCase.AssignedToClient]
ON [docCase].[AssignedToClientId] = [docCase.AssignedToClient].[Id]
WHERE [docCase].[AssignedByAgentId] = 1
ORDER BY [docCase].[LastUpdateDate] DESC
) AS [t]
OrderBy information not always retained across other operators such as Distinct. Entity Framework does not document (to my knowledge) how exactly OrderBy is propagated.
This kind of makes sense because some operators have undefined output order. The fact that ordering is retained in many situations is a convenience for the developer.
Move the OrderBy to the end of the query (or at least past the Distinct).
The reason for the difference in queries is that Distinct messes up result order. So when you first execute OrderBy and then Distinct, you can just es well not execute OrderBy, because this order is lost anyway. So EF can just optimize it away.
Calling Take in between causes the result set to be semantically different: You first order the items, take the first 1000 items of that order and then call Distinct on them.
What you can change in your query depends mainly on the result you want to achieve. Maybe you want to first make the result set distinct then order by date and finally take the amount of items. Other options are also thinkable based on your requirements.

Linq statement that queries field by multiple values gets converted to in statement

I've got a linq statement like this:
this.DataContext.TableName.Where(r => r.Field =="REQUEST" || r.Field== "UPDATE")
The statement when converted to sql looks like this:
WHERE ([Extent1].[Field] IN (N'REQUEST',N'UPDATE'))
rather than:
WHERE Field = 'REQUEST' or Field = 'UPDATE'
The bottom example runs twice as fast as the top. Is anyone able to point me in the right direction in order to get the converted SQL to look like the below example.
I'm using C# ASP.Net MVC 5, EF6, but whatever I seem to try just gives the same results and uses the IN statement.
I use LINQPad4 with:
Customers.Where(x => x.Name == "Tom" || x.Name == "Dick").Dump()
Generate:
-- Region Parameters
DECLARE #p0 NVarChar(1000) = 'Tom'
DECLARE #p1 NVarChar(1000) = 'Dick'
-- EndRegion
SELECT [t0].[ID], [t0].[Name]
FROM [Customer] AS [t0]
WHERE ([t0].[Name] = #p0) OR ([t0].[Name] = #p1)
IN vs OR is discussed here: IN vs OR in the SQL WHERE Clause
Hope this helps.
In this case if the concern is performance well, you have a big long list of articles to read to have your own opinion. For once maybe you have to concern about if your column needs and index and if your statistics are updated.
If your values are request and update as a string, evaluate if you need a related table to hold this values and have a related id in your table with an integer value. This int column can have an index and this will provide better performance and a smaller footprint in your data and index size.
LINQ will try to provide the best execution based in your database structure. So for instance if you provide a good design in your database you dont have to bother in most cases of what is the result sql from the linq query. (both in big querys and with big databases always make this check, and check the execution plan)

Entity Framework Skip method running very slow

I'm using Entity Framework 5, ObjectContext and POCOs on my data access layer. I have a generic respository implementation and I have a method that queries the database with paging using Skip() and Take(). Everything works fine, except that the query performance is very slow when skipping a lot of rows (I'm talking about 170k rows)
This is an excerpt of my query on Linq to Entities:
C# Code:
ObjectContext oc = TheOBJEntitiesFactory.CreateOBJEntitiesContext(connection);
var idPred = oc.CreateObjectSet<view_Trans>("view_Trans").AsQueryable();
idPred = idPred.OrderBy(sortColumn, sortDirection.ToLower().Equals("desc"));
var result = idPred.Skip(iDisplayStart).Take(iDisplayLength);
return new PagedResult<view_Trans>(result, totalRecords);
In the translated query to Transact-SQL I noticed that instead of using the ROW_NUMBER() clause with the view directly its making a sub-query and applying the ROW_NUMBER() to the results of the sub-query...
example:
select top(10) extent1.A, extent1.B.extent1.C from (
select extent1.A, extent1.B, extent1.C,
row_number() OVER (ORDER BY [Extent1].[A] DESC) AS [row_number]
from (
select A,B,C from table as extent1)) as extent1
WHERE [Extent1].[row_number] > 176610
ORDER BY [Extent1].[A] DESC
This takes about 165 seconds to complete. Any idea on how to improve the performance of the translated query statement?
For those not following the comments above, I suspected the problem was not the extra SELECT, since that extra SELECT is present on many, many EF queries which do not take 165s to run. I eventually noticed that his ObjectSet referenced a VIEW and wondered if that might be part of the problem. After some experimentation, he narrowed the problem down to a LEFT JOIN inside the view. I suggested that he ran the Database Tuning Advisor on that query; he did, and the two indices suggested fixed the problem.
One reason for the slowness is probably that your sql is ordering your rows twice.
To control the query, the only option I know of is to call idPred.SqlQuery("Select ...", params). This will allow you to write your own optimized query for the data request.

Why does the Entity Framework generate nested SQL queries?

Why does the Entity Framework generate nested SQL queries?
I have this code
var db = new Context();
var result = db.Network.Where(x => x.ServerID == serverId)
.OrderBy(x=> x.StartTime)
.Take(limit);
Which generates this! (Note the double select statement)
SELECT
`Project1`.`Id`,
`Project1`.`ServerID`,
`Project1`.`EventId`,
`Project1`.`StartTime`
FROM (SELECT
`Extent1`.`Id`,
`Extent1`.`ServerID`,
`Extent1`.`EventId`,
`Extent1`.`StartTime`
FROM `Networkes` AS `Extent1`
WHERE `Extent1`.`ServerID` = #p__linq__0) AS `Project1`
ORDER BY
`Project1`.`StartTime` DESC LIMIT 5
What should I change so that it results in one select statement? I'm using MySQL and Entity Framework with Code First.
Update
I have the same result regardless of the type of the parameter passed to the OrderBy() method.
Update 2: Timed
Total Time (hh:mm:ss.ms) 05:34:13.000
Average Time (hh:mm:ss.ms) 25:42.000
Max Time (hh:mm:ss.ms) 51:54.000
Count 13
First Seen Nov 6, 12 19:48:19
Last Seen Nov 6, 12 20:40:22
Raw query:
SELECT `Project?`.`Id`, `Project?`.`ServerID`, `Project?`.`EventId`, `Project?`.`StartTime` FROM (SELECT `Extent?`.`Id`, `Extent?`.`ServerID`, `Extent?`.`EventId`, `Extent?`.`StartTime`, FROM `Network` AS `Extent?` WHERE `Extent?`.`ServerID` = ?) AS `Project?` ORDER BY `Project?`.`Starttime` DESC LIMIT ?
I used a program to take snapshots from the current process in MySQL.
Other queries were executed at the same time, but when I change it to just one SELECT statement, it NEVER goes over one second. Maybe I have something else that's going on; I'm asking 'cause I'm not so into DBs...
Update 3: The explain statement
The Entity Framework generated
'1', 'PRIMARY', '<derived2>', 'ALL', NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, '46', 'Using filesort'
'2', 'DERIVED', 'Extent?', 'ref', 'serveridneventid,serverid', 'serveridneventid', '109', '', '45', 'Using where'
One liner
'1', 'SIMPLE', 'network', 'ref', 'serveridneventid,serverid', 'serveridneventid', '109', 'const', '45', 'Using where; Using filesort'
This is from my QA environment, so the timing I pasted above is not related to the rowcount explain statements. I think that there are about 500,000 records that match one server ID.
Solution
I switched from MySQL to SQL Server. I don't want to end up completely rewriting the application layer.
It's the easiest way to build the query logically from the expression tree. Usually the performance will not be an issue. If you are having performance issues you can try something like this to get the entities back:
var results = db.ExecuteStoreQuery<Network>(
"SELECT Id, ServerID, EventId, StartTime FROM Network WHERE ServerID = #ID",
serverId);
results = results.OrderBy(x=> x.StartTime).Take(limit);
My initial impression was that doing it this way would actually be more efficient, although in testing against a MSSQL server, I got <1 second responses regardless.
With a single select statement, it sorts all the records (Order By), and then filters them to the set you want to see (Where), and then takes the top 5 (Limit 5 or, for me, Top 5). On a large table, the sort takes a significant portion of the time. With a nested statement, it first filters the records down to a subset, and only then does the expensive sort operation on it.
Edit: I did test this, but I realized I had an error in my test which invalidated it. Test results removed.
Why does Entity Framework produce a nested query? The simple answer is because Entity Framework breaks your query expression down into an expression tree and then uses that expression tree to build your query. A tree naturally generates nested query expressions (i.e. a child node generates a query and a parent node generates a query on that query).
Why doesn't Entity Framework simplify the query down and write it as you would? The simple answer is because there is a limited amount of work that can go into the query generation engine, and while it's better now than it was in earlier versions it's not perfect and probably never will be.
All that said there should be no significant speed difference between the query you would write by hand and the query EF generated in this case. The database is clever enough to generate an execution plan that applies the WHERE clause first in either case.
If you want to get the EF to generate the query without the subselect, use a constant within the query, not a variable.
I have previously created my own .Where and all other LINQ methods that first traverse the expression tree and convert all variables, method calls etc. into Expression.Constant. It was done just because of this issue in Entity Framework...
I just stumbled upon this post because I suffer from the same problem. I already spend days tracking this down and it it is just a poor query generation in mysql.
I already filed a bug at mysql.com http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=75272
To summarize the problem:
This simple query
context.products
.Include(x => x.category)
.Take(10)
.ToList();
gets translated into
SELECT
`Limit1`.`C1`,
`Limit1`.`id`,
`Limit1`.`name`,
`Limit1`.`category_id`,
`Limit1`.`id1`,
`Limit1`.`name1`
FROM (SELECT
`Extent1`.`id`,
`Extent1`.`name`,
`Extent1`.`category_id`,
`Extent2`.`id` AS `id1`,
`Extent2`.`name` AS `name1`,
1 AS `C1`
FROM `products` AS `Extent1` INNER JOIN `categories` AS `Extent2` ON `Extent1`.`category_id` = `Extent2`.`id` LIMIT 10) AS `Limit1`
and performs pretty well. Anyway, the outer query is pretty much useless. Now If I add an OrderBy
context.products
.Include(x => x.category)
.OrderBy(x => x.id)
.Take(10)
.ToList();
the query changes to
SELECT
`Project1`.`C1`,
`Project1`.`id`,
`Project1`.`name`,
`Project1`.`category_id`,
`Project1`.`id1`,
`Project1`.`name1`
FROM (SELECT
`Extent1`.`id`,
`Extent1`.`name`,
`Extent1`.`category_id`,
`Extent2`.`id` AS `id1`,
`Extent2`.`name` AS `name1`,
1 AS `C1`
FROM `products` AS `Extent1` INNER JOIN `categories` AS `Extent2` ON `Extent1`.`category_id` = `Extent2`.`id`) AS `Project1`
ORDER BY
`Project1`.`id` ASC LIMIT 10
Which is bad because the order by is in the outer query. Theat means MySQL has to pull every record in order to perform an orderby which results in using filesort
I verified that SQL Server (Comapact at least) does not generate nested queries for the same code
SELECT TOP (10)
[Extent1].[id] AS [id],
[Extent1].[name] AS [name],
[Extent1].[category_id] AS [category_id],
[Extent2].[id] AS [id1],
[Extent2].[name] AS [name1],
FROM [products] AS [Extent1]
LEFT OUTER JOIN [categories] AS [Extent2] ON [Extent1].[category_id] = [Extent2].[id]
ORDER BY [Extent1].[id] ASC
Actually the queries generated by Entity Framework are few ugly, less than LINQ 2 SQL but still ugly.
However, very probably you database engine will make the desired execution plan, and the query will run smoothly.

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