SQL 2008 R2 Standard vs Enterprise on Parallelism

  • I'd like to understand from a high level what's missing from Standard SQL edition where parallelism is concerned. I thought it was only for special index operations and file partitions that it was choked.

    Our new SQL Analyst is trying to help fill the non-existent DBA role, and he's telling me that queries are slow because "Standard edition doesn't have parallelism - it's disabled. We need Enterprise Edition."

    I've done a bit of query tuning, and I haven't run into this before, so I'd like a reality check on just what kinds of things are limited by using Standard edition and what to watch for to know when we're up against that limitation.

    When I estimate plans for existing operations (example attached), I see lots of elements of parallelism. Are we talking about two different things?

  • andrew-petre (6/10/2014)


    "Standard edition doesn't have parallelism - it's disabled. We need Enterprise Edition."

    Hahahahahahahaha. Nonsense.

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
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  • All of the differences between Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition are not published. Those that are published is too long of a list to try to write out from memory.

    First thing though is that parallelism is in ALL editions of SQL Server. Even the current versions of SQL Express. Parallelism is absolutely available in Standard Edition. The Analyst should go back to analyzing and leave the DBA duties alone.


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  • The analyst is just a spy from Microsoft trying to sell you an Enterprise license. 🙂

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  • It could be that Max Degree of Parallelism (MAXDOP) is set to 1 at the instance (server) level, but as others have stated, parallelism is not edition-specific.

    Regards

    Lempster

    EDIT: Didn't read the original post properly! Clearly, parallelism is being used. Setting MAXDOP to 1 at the instance level would prevent parallelism so if you weren't seeing any parallel operations in a QEP, that setting could be the reason.

  • Confirms my suspicions. I will kindly ask for some examples and show my basic plans. I hate feeling like the cliché sysadmin pushing back against the database team...

    Thanks, all!

  • ...what's missing from Standard SQL edition where parallelism is concerned. I thought it was only for special index operations... are we talking about two different things?

    I just wanted to add that I think you are talking about two different things... If you look at Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2008 R2 under Scalability and Performance you will notice that Parallel index operations are only supported by Datacenter and Enterprise Editions. Perhaps that is what your analyst was talking about.

    Parallel Query Processing, on the other hand, is supported by all versions of SQL Server 2008 (and earlier but I don't know the details of hand) provided that you have 2 or more CPUs.

    "I cant stress enough the importance of switching from a sequential files mindset to set-based thinking. After you make the switch, you can spend your time tuning and optimizing your queries instead of maintaining lengthy, poor-performing code."

    -- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001

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