CH,
Interesting test so I tried to reproduce your results. I used just 4 passes instead of the 10 in your loop and got this:
Method AVGDuration
CrossTab 6483
CrossTab CTE 6534
Pivot 15032
Up to 100,000 rows they were all tied. But at 1M, SQL appears to have parallelized the crosstab queries on my box because I saw this (example) in the results where I set STATISTICS TIME ON.
Pivot
SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 10983 ms, elapsed time = 11484 ms.
CROSSTAB
SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 17847 ms, elapsed time = 5759 ms.
CROSSTAB CTE
SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 18158 ms, elapsed time = 5954 ms.
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?
My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.
Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
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