Sql-server – How to get SEEK accessing converted ID via view

execution-planperformancequery-performancesql servertype conversionview

Assume I have a table:

-- just for test purposes
CREATE TABLE SomeTable (
    ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT PK__SomeTable__ID PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
    ,SomeColumn1 NVARCHAR(50) NULL
    ,SomeColumn2 DATETIME NULL
    );

-- populate table with some rows
INSERT INTO SomeTable DEFAULT VALUES;
GO 1000

Because a third-party application there is a view converting ID column of a table from INT to NVARCHAR (assume it's a must):

CREATE VIEW ThirdPartyView AS
SELECT
    ID = CAST(ID as NVARCHAR(10))
    ,C1 = SomeColumn1
    ,C2 = SomeColumn2
FROM SomeTable;

Then when I access one row by ID, I get an INDEX SCAN:

SELECT *
FROM ThirdPartyView
WHERE ID = N'1'

enter image description here

I understand why.

What can I do to get INDEX SEEK outside of a query?

EDITORIAL / Circumstances:

  • base table (SomeTable) definition could NOT be changed (cannot add columns)
  • view has to have the same columns (cannot add columns)
  • define any indexes is possible
  • I can make the view an indexed view but prefer to avoid that option
  • The other side expects the data type of the ID column is NVARCHAR. I have to meet this conditions, unfortunately. Or I've been told to meet them. Probably their application would fail if it's not.

Best Answer

The issue is that your query through the view is the same as doing

SELECT *
FROM SomeTable
WHERE CAST(SomeTable.ID as NVARCHAR(10)) = N'1'

Pretty much any CAST of a column in a predicate will render that predicate unsargable. The only exceptions that I am aware of are a CAST of datetime column to date and VARCHAR to NVARCHAR under some collations.

There is no such exception for NVARCHAR to INT.

You might hope that it would do something like 

WHERE SomeTable.ID = TRY_CAST('Your search string' as int)

but it is not as simple as that. If your search string is '1' the two would return the same results but for the search string 'ยน' (superscript 1) the casting to int fails but the string comparison compares equal under some collations. Conversely for the search string ' 1' (with leading space) the int cast and comparison would discard the leading space and compare equal but the string comparison would compare unequal (and similarly with empty string which is cast to 0 when converted to int)

Possible solutions

In general you could create either an indexed view or a new index on the base table referencing a computed column but both seem quite suboptimal compared with removing the CAST from the view so the existing index can be seeked.

Computed Column

You could create a computed column on SomeTable with definition CAST(ID as NVARCHAR(10)) and then index that.

ALTER TABLE SomeTable ADD strID AS CAST(ID as NVARCHAR(10));    

CREATE INDEX IX ON SomeTable (strID ) INCLUDE (ID, SomeColumn1, SomeColumn2);

SELECT *
FROM ThirdPartyView
WHERE ID = N'1';

enter image description here

Indexed view

Given the restrictions in the question the computed column idea seems ruled out. An alternative will be to create an indexed view but likely you will need to change the query text to get this to work.

  • In all editions except Enterprise Edition the NOEXPAND hint will be needed to get the indexed view to be matched.
  • If you are on Enterprise Edition the automatic matching in principle would work whether you indexed the original view or created a copy...
  • ... but index view matching will only be considered at later stages of optimisation. If the query is cheap enough optimisation will end before it gets to that point. In your case in particular you will also need to fight against trivial plan. I added a million rows of data to the table and the indexed view still wasn't hit - as the plan was below the cost threshold for parallelism and it didn't proceed to further optimisation phases beyond trivial.
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