Sql-server – Atrocious performance joining INSERTED and DELETED tables in a trigger

sql serversql-server-2008trigger

I've got an UPDATE trigger on a table that watches for a specific column changing from one specific value to any other value. When this happens, it updates some related data in another table via a single UPDATE statement.

The first thing the trigger does is check to see if any updated rows had the value of this column changed from the value in question. It simply joins INSERTED to DELETED and compares the value in that column. If nothing qualifies, it bails out early so the UPDATE statement doesn't run.

IF NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT TOP 1 i.CUSTNMBR
    FROM INSERTED i
        INNER JOIN DELETED d
            ON i.CUSTNMBR = d.CUSTNMBR
    WHERE d.CUSTCLAS = 'Misc'
        AND i.CUSTCLAS != 'Misc'
)
    RETURN

In this case, CUSTNMBR is the primary key of the underlying table. If I do a large update on this table (say, 5000+ rows), this statement takes AGES, even if I haven't touched the CUSTCLAS column. I can watch it stall on this statement for several minutes in Profiler.

The execution plan is bizarre. It shows an Inserted Scan with 3,714 executions, and ~18.5 million output rows. That runs through a filter on the CUSTCLAS column. It joins this (via nested loop) to a Deleted Scan (also filtered on CUSTCLAS), which executes only once and has 5000 output rows.

What idiotic thing am I doing here to cause this? Note that the trigger absolutely must properly handle multi-row updates.

EDIT:

I also tried writing it like this (in case EXISTS was doing something unpleasant), but it's still just as terrible.

DECLARE @CUSTNMBR varchar(31)
SELECT TOP 1 @CUSTNMBR = i.CUSTNMBR
FROM INSERTED i
    INNER JOIN DELETED d
        ON i.CUSTNMBR = d.CUSTNMBR
WHERE d.CUSTCLAS = 'Misc'
    AND i.CUSTCLAS != 'Misc'

IF @CUSTNMBR IS NULL
    RETURN

Best Answer

You could evaluate using explicit INNER MERGE JOIN or INNER HASH JOIN hints but given that you are presumably using these tables again later in the trigger you are probably better off just inserting the contents of inserted and deleted tables into indexed #temp tables and being done with it.

They do not get useful indexes created for them automatically.

Related Solutions

Sql-server – What would cause extra records to be inserted during a INSERT trigger

First, you don't need the IF EXISTS part in your trigger code. You have the exact same code in the second part so if there are 0 rows produced, you'll be inserting 0 rows anyway:

CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[trFooInsert] on [dbo].[Foo]
AFTER INSERT
AS 
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO Foo(ID, Etc, Flag)              
    SELECT a.ID, a.Etc, 1 FROM Inserted a
        LEFT JOIN Foo b ON b.Flag = 1 AND a.ID = b.ID
        WHERE b.Flag IS NULL AND a.Flag = 0
END ; -- trigger

which can also be written as:

CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[trFooInsert] on [dbo].[Foo]
AFTER INSERT
AS 
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO Foo(ID, Etc, Flag)              
    SELECT a.ID, a.Etc, 1 
        FROM Inserted a
        WHERE a.Flag = 0
          AND NOT EXISTS
              ( SELECT *
                FROM Foo b 
                WHERE b.Flag = 1 AND a.ID = b.ID
              )
END ; -- trigger

So, you want any insert on the table with Flag=0 to also trigger another insert, with same data but Flag=1 (unless there is already a row in Foo with that ID and Flag=1.

Second, and what the actual problem is about, Inserted is a special table with all the (just) "inserted" rows, not the full table you inserted into. It obviously has less (than or equal) rows as Foo after the insert. So a join to it will not give same results as a join to Foo.

The trigger that produces the multiple unwanted rows had Inserted b instead of Foo b so it does this:

For any insert on the table with Flag=0 it also triggered another insert, with same data but Flag=1 (unless this same insert had such a row inserted).

You can read more about the special Inserted and Deleted tables at the MSDN:
How to use the inserted and deleted Tables

Mysql – Is it possible for a trigger to update a row in a table using a value that was deleted

If I understand your question right, what you want is an after delete trigger:

DELIMITER $$
CREATE TRIGGER ad_foo AFTER DELETE on foo
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
  update table1 SET table1.state=1 WHERE id=OLD.id;
END$$
DELIMITER ;

Example with just the insert: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/974b4/1

Example with insert and delete: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/0bf72/1

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Sql-server – What would cause extra records to be inserted during a INSERT trigger

Mysql – Is it possible for a trigger to update a row in a table using a value that was deleted

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