Paging and Versioning Using ROW

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Paging and Versioning Using ROW_NUMBER()

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Lawrence Moore

Posted Monday, June 14, 2010 8:46 PM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Paging and Versioning Using ROW_NUMBER()

Post #937225

info-1049562

Posted Monday, June 14, 2010 11:45 PM

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Dear mr. Moore,

Perhaps I have a not so smart question but I wonder if this method
can be used on mysql databases as well for as far as I know one can't use stored procedures in a mysql database.

Hope te hear from you.

Kind regards,

Martin

Post #937252

Lawrence Moore

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 2:42 AM

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Martin,
Unfortunately I don't know much about MySQL as my background is MS SQL Server.

However, you can definitely use stored procedures:
http://www.mysqltutorial.org/introduction-to-sql-stored-procedures.aspx

As for Row_Number() type functionality, I don't know if the partitioning capabilities are available, but I found the following link which discusses adding a rownumber field:
http://jimlife.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/displaying-row-number-rownum-in-mysql/

In conjunction with stored procedures, it should provide the same paging functionality, if this is what you were after.

Hope that helps,
Regards,
Lawrence

Post #937317

Paul White

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 4:53 AM

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A well-presented and enjoyable article, thanks.

Paul White
SQL Server MVP
SQLblog.com
@SQL_Kiwi

Post #937381

Anye Mercy

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 6:57 AM

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Hi Lawrence, I have spent quite a bit of time recently using Row_Number() with CTEs for paging purposes and have tried to gauge how to get the best performance possible out of them.

While researching I read that when you use a CTE in a query, it reruns the CTE for ever column in the outer select that references it:
such that in your example query:

;WITH BookCTE (RowNumber, BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor)
AS
(
SELECT
ROW_NUMBER()OVER (PARTITION BY BookAuthor ORDER BY BookPublishDate DESC),
BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor
FROM dbo.Books
)
SELECT BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor
FROM BookCTE
WHERE RowNumber=1
ORDER BY BookTitle

it would run the CTE 4 times -- once for each column in the outer select. For the example query here that is not a big deal, but if the CTE definition is complex and involves some sort of aggregate function or group by it can be a bit tricky.

So I have experimented with writing the query as such and also including only the minimum number of columns in the CTE as required and then having the outer query join to the tables necessary for the select. Your example can't really be refined much using this method since all of the columns in the select statement are "used" by the CTE... but if we pretended that you also needed the PageCount, PublisherName, and ISBN of the book, then using this method it would read as:

;WITH BookCTE (RowNumber, BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor)
AS
(
SELECT
ROW_NUMBER()OVER (PARTITION BY BookAuthor ORDER BY BookPublishDate DESC),
BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor
FROM dbo.Books
)
SELECT C.BookTitle, C.BookEdition, C.BookPublishDate, C.BookAuthor, B.PageCount, B.PublisherName, B.ISBN
FROM BookCTE C inner join Books B on C.BookTitle=B.BookTitle --this isn't a very good key, you'd actually want to use the pkey of the table to join
WHERE RowNumber=1
ORDER BY BookTitle

Why I bring this up is, first, I wanted to verify the assertion that I read that this is indeed what occurs behind the scenes (since I don't remember where I read it) and also to comment that I have noticed empirically that sometimes the performance is better when I include all the select columns in the CTE and write a simple outer query and sometimes it is better when I do it the way I described above. In my application, the CTE definition ends up being variable most of the time (based on the input parameters from the user), so I am having to make my best guess as to which way the performance will be better in the majority of cases.

Do you (or any of the other SQL gurus reading this) have any thoughts on the topic or best practices on how to write these queries when they get complicated, to keep performance from going way down?

Thanks in advance,
Anye

--
Anye Mercy
"Service Unavailable is not an Error" -- John, ENOM support
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya in "Princess Bride"
"Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice." -- Will Durant

Post #937445

Lawrence Moore

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 7:11 AM

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Anye,

Many thanks for your post.

It's news to me that the performance of a CTE query is based on the number of columns in the "Outer" query.

Rather, CTEs are generally very efficient as the processing is done with one pass of the data.

Certainly, a very quick investigation using SET STATISTICS IO does not raise any concerns.

For example, running:
SET STATISTICS IO ON

;WITH BookCTE (RowNumber, BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor)
AS
(
SELECT
ROW_NUMBER()OVER (PARTITION BY BookTitle ORDER BY BookEdition DESC),
BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor
FROM dbo.Books
)
SELECT BookTitle, BookEdition, BookPublishDate, BookAuthor
FROM BookCTE
WHERE RowNumber=1
ORDER BY BookTitle

...gives the following output:
Table 'Books'. Scan count 1, logical reads 2, physical reads 0, read-ahead reads 0, lob logical reads 0, lob physical reads 0, lob read-ahead reads 0.

Running the same query but only returning a single column (e.g. BookTitle) yields the same IO results.

See if you can find the reference that stated this behaviour, or otherwise provide a setup that would show this to be the case. Perhaps it occurs with very large tables where the processing cannot be done fully in memory(?)

I'd obviously welcome other experts' views on this point.

Best regards,
Lawrence.

Post #937462

rramirez

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 8:01 AM

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This article is a good example of how technical information can be written in a clear language.

Thanks for sharing this useful technique!!!

Roberto R.

Post #937523

Anye Mercy

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 8:07 AM

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Ok, I dug it up (or dug up something else that was related) and I apparently misread it -- the article I read says that the CTE is executed the number of times the CTE itself is referenced (i.e. # of joins) x the number of rows from the anchor.

http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson/archive/2008/05/17/non-recursive-common-table-expressions-performance-sucks-1-cte-self-join-cte-sub-query-inline-expansion.aspx

http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson/archive/2008/05/17/non-recursive-common-table-expressions-performance-sucks-2-row-number-is-executed-number-of-cte-references-x-number-of-rows-from-the-anchor.aspx

His examples JOIN to the CTE multiple times and therein lies the performance hit, as opposed to # of columns from the CTE as I had previously believed.

However, it still leaves me curious as to why sometimes using a simpler CTE with more joins in the outer query performs better than the other way around. I will play around with this with statistics on with some of my "hairier" queries and see what it comes back with.

--
Anye Mercy
"Service Unavailable is not an Error" -- John, ENOM support
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya in "Princess Bride"
"Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice." -- Will Durant

Post #937530

Lawrence Moore

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 8:12 AM

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Anye,

Thanks for posting a follow up.

It sounds like any useful findings you gather could form the basis for an interesting CTE article. Wink

With regards,
Lawrence.

Post #937538

grc-80104

Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2010 8:46 AM

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Great article. I've used ROW_NUMBER() in CTE to evaluate (compare) data in the previous rows or next rows. It was a real life saver. Smile

Post #937575

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