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Partitioned Tables, Parallelism & Performance considerations

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Q:  When querying SS2005 Partitioned Tables, what kind of parallelism should I expect to see and how will that affect performance?

 

A: First, a brief background on partitioning.  SQL Server 2005 table partitioning provides many improvements in terms of manageability and availability.   The manageability improvements allow metadata only switch-in and switch-out of a partition of data (supporting sliding window requirements).  Availability improvements include online index rebuilds, parallel operations, and piecemeal restores of filegroups (see blog SQL Server 2005 OnLine Piecemeal Restore at https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2005/10/27/485580.aspx).

 

Now let’s look at how performance is impacted by partitioned tables.  Regardless of whether you are using partitioning, the selection of a parallel plan is determined by the number of CPUs, query cost, available memory and current workload. The remaining considerations outlined here are valid only if all of these allow using parallel plan.  

 

When a query uses a single partition e.g. all but a single partition is eliminated, SQL Server 2005 Intra-Partition parallelism can parallelize row retrieval using multiple threads up to the sp_configure’d value of Maximum Degree of Parallelism (MAXDOP).   Frequently, MAXDOP is set to the default of 0 which means MAXDOP is equal to the total number of CPUs.  When a query spans two or more partitions, only a single thread per partition will be used to retrieve rows. 

 

If your number of partitions is equal to MAXDOP or less, data skewing may cause some parallel threads to complete before others resulting in CXPACKET waits.  In cases where the number of partitions exceeds MAXDOP, SQL Server 2005 on-demand parallelism means that when a thread completes its work on a partition, it will automatically start processing the next partition in line.  Say you have 16 partitions and a MAXDOP of 8.  The first 8 threads work on partitions 1-8.  The first thread completed will start processing partition 9, the next, partition 10 and so on.

 

If you have big multi-proc box of 8 or more CPUs, the worst case query performance would be a single SELECT statement that spans two partitions (see Table 1).  One thread per partition would be used to retrieve the rows (See Table 2 yellow highlight for partitions 80 and 81 & number of threads in Executes column) although MAXDOP can still be applied after row retrieval in subsequent steps (See Table 2 green highlights).

 

Table 1: Retrieve 2 weeks of data

SELECT

       SUM(Sales_Qty) as Sales_Qty,

       SUM(Sale_Amt) as Sales_Amount

FROM SalesDB.dbo.Tbl_Fact_ Sales – Partitioned by week

WHERE date_id between '20050703' and '20050716'

 

Table 2: Set Statistics Profile: MAXDOP = 12

Rows

Executes

StmtText

1

1

SELECT SUM([Sales_Qty]) [Sales_Qty],SUM([Sale_Amt]) [Sales_Amount] FROM [SalesDB].[dbo].[Tbl_Fact_Sales] WHERE [date_id]>=@1 AND [date_id]<=@2

0

0

  |--Compute Scalar(DEFINE:([Expr1002]=CASE WHEN [globalagg1008]=(0) THEN NULL ELSE [globalagg1010] END, [Expr1003]=CASE WHEN [globalagg1012]=(0) THEN NULL ELSE [globalagg1014] END))

1

1

       |--Stream Aggregate(DEFINE:([globalagg1008]=SUM([partialagg1007]), [globalagg1010]=SUM([partialagg1009]), [globalagg1012]=SUM([partialagg1011]), [globalagg1014]=SUM([partialagg1013])))

2

1

            |--Parallelism(Gather Streams)

2

12

                 |--Stream Aggregate(DEFINE:([partialagg1007]=COUNT_BIG([SalesDB].[dbo].[Tbl_Fact_Sales].[Sales_Qty] as [ss].[Sales_Qty]), [partialagg1009]=SUM([SalesDB].[dbo].[Tbl_Fact_Sales].[Sales_Qty] as [ss].[Sales_Qty]), [partialagg1011]=COUNT_BIG([SalesDB].[dbo].[Tbl_Fact_Sales].[Sale_Amt] as [ss].[Sale_Amt]), [partialagg1013]=SUM([SalesDB].[dbo].[Tbl_Fact_Sales].[Sale_Amt] as [ss].[Sale_Amt])))

20577235

12

                      |--Nested Loops(Inner Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([PtnIds1006]) PARTITION ID:([PtnIds1006]))

2

12

                           |--Parallelism(Distribute Streams, Demand Partitioning)

2

1

                           | |--Constant Scan(VALUES:(((80)),((81))))

20577235

2

                           |--Index Seek(OBJECT:([SalesDB].[dbo].[Tbl_Fact_Sales].[IX_Tbl_Fact_Sales_SKDteItmStrIDSalQtySalAmtDiscMkd] AS [ss]), SEEK:([ss].[SK_Date_ID] >= (20050703) AND [ss].[SK_Date_ID] <= (20050716)) ORDERED FORWARD PARTITION ID:([PtnIds1006]))

 

For instance, suppose you have a TB-sized Sales table that is partitioned by month.  A common query pattern may be to compare this month to last month, or perhaps this month to a year ago.

 

Table 3: MONTHLY Partitions

 

WHERE clause

Partitions

Retrieval Parallelism

Single SELECT statement

SELECT …. WHERE DateCol BETWEEN ’10/1/2005’ and ‘11/30/2005’

2

1 thread per partition *

SELECT

UNION SELECT

[UNION SELECT]

Select …. Where DateCol between ’10/1/2005’ and ‘10/31/2005

UNION

Select …. Where DateCol between ’11/1/2005’ and ‘11/30/2005

1 per select

MAXDOP per partition

 

Table 4: WEEKLY Partitions: Sales for November 1-15

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