I have a simple Indexed View. When I query against it, it's pretty slow. First I show you the schema's and indexes. Then the simple queries. Finally a query plan screnie.
This is what it looks like :-
CREATE view [dbo].[PostsCleanSubjectView] with SCHEMABINDING AS
SELECT PostId, PostTypeId,
[dbo].[ToUriCleanText]([Subject]) AS CleanedSubject
FROM [dbo].[Posts]
My udf ToUriCleanText
just replaces various characters with an empty character. Eg. replaces all '#' chars with ''.
Then i've added two indexes on this :-
Primary Key Index (ie. Clustered Index)
CREATE UNIQUE CLUSTERED INDEX [PK_PostCleanSubjectView] ON
[dbo].[PostsCleanSubjectView]
(
[PostId] ASC
)
WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,
SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, DROP_EXISTING = OFF,
ONLINE = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
And a Non-Clustered Index
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_PostCleanSubjectView_PostTypeId_Subject] ON
[dbo].[PostsCleanSubjectView]
(
[CleanedSubject] ASC,
[PostTypeId] ASC
)
WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,
SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, DROP_EXISTING = OFF,
ONLINE = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
Now, this has around 25K rows. Nothing big at all.
When i do the following queries, they both take around 4 odd seconds. WTF? This should be.. basically instant!
SELECT a.PostId
FROM PostsCleanSubjectView a
WHERE a.CleanedSubject = 'Just-out-of-town'
SELECT a.PostId
FROM PostsCleanSubjectView a
WHERE a.CleanedSubject = 'Just-out-of-town' AND a.PostTypeId = 1
What have I done wrong? Is the UDF screwing things up? I thought that, because i have index'd this view, it would be materialised. As such, it would not have to calculate that string column.
Here's a screenie of the query plan, if this helps :-
Also, notice the index it's using? Why is it using that index?
That index is...
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX [IX_Posts_PostTypeId_Subject] ON [dbo].[Posts]
(
[PostTypeId] ASC,
[Subject] ASC
)
WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF,
SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, DROP_EXISTING = OFF,
ONLINE = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
So yeah, any ideas folks?
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ToUriCleanText]
(
@Subject NVARCHAR(300)
)
RETURNS NVARCHAR(350) WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
BEGIN
<snip>
// Nothing insteresting in here.
//Just lots of SET @foo = REPLACE(@foo, '$', ''), etc.
END
Yep, it was because i wasn't using the index on the view and had to manually make sure i didn't expand the view. The server is Sql Server 2008 Standard Edition. The full answer is below.
Here's the proof, WITH (NOEXPAND)
Thank you all for helping me solve this problem :)
You can speed things up by disabling the non-clusterd indexes, then manually building them after the clustered index has been rebuilt.
Indexing makes columns faster to query by creating pointers to where data is stored within a database. Imagine you want to find a piece of information that is within a large database. To get this information out of the database the computer will look through every row until it finds it.
What edition of SQL Server? I believe that only Enterprise and Developer Edition will use indexed views automatically, while the others support it using query hints.
SELECT a.PostId
FROM PostsCleanSubjectView a WITH (NOEXPAND)
WHERE a.CleanedSubject = 'Just-out-of-town' AND a.PostTypeId = 1
From Query Hints (Transact SQL) on MSDN:
The indexed view is not expanded only if the view is directly referenced in the SELECT part of the query and WITH (NOEXPAND) or WITH (NOEXPAND, INDEX( index_value [ ,...n ] ) ) is specified.
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