3

Database design:

Table Name : Plays ( 6 million records)

Columns: Play id, col1, col2......col7, PlayFieldValues

PlayFieldValues xml column. sample xml stored in this column

<PlayAttributes>
  <PlayFields>
    <PlayField ID="Play.GenericInt1" >25</PlayField>
    <PlayField ID="X" TS="">0</PlayField>
    <PlayField ID="Y" >OFF</PlayField>
  </PlayFields>
</PlayAttributes>

Each xml has more than 25 elements

Using following query I am returning all Playid's from plays table having "Play.GenericInt1" attribute value 25 (​we can add more conditions in where clause. This is just an example.)

Select 

playId
FROM
(
SELECT playId, x.v.value('@ID[1]', 'VARCHAR(100)') AS playfield ,
x.v.value('.', 'VARCHAR(100)') AS playfieldvalue
from plays
cross apply PlayFieldValues.nodes('/PlayAttributes/PlayFields/PlayField') x(v)
)T

where
T.playfield in('Play.GenericInt1') and T.playfieldvalue=25

Problem: This query is working great on plays table with 1k or 2k rows, but it is not scaling when running on 5 million rows table. execution time is crossing 20 min. Please advice what types of methods and procedures in sql I can use to search the xml column. I tried XML indexes but it costing us lot of space and maintenance problems.

7
  • 5
    What version of SQL Server are you using? Have you tried selective XML indexes? Have you considered materializing the pieces you're after at insert/update time, with a trigger, or with a background job? May 14, 2015 at 0:18
  • sql server 2008 and sql server 2012. What is materializing the pieces means? please explain. no I havent tried selective indexes. I am researching now. Thanks.
    – ess
    May 14, 2015 at 0:58
  • Materializing means storing a copy somewhere. So instead of extracting playfield from the XML at query time, you do that at insert/update time, and store the result somewhere. May 14, 2015 at 1:05
  • 5
    You can do 6 million rows once each, and perform that as a background task and in chunks, or you can do the above for all 6 million rows every time you run a query. May 14, 2015 at 1:16
  • 2
    Yes, it's a trade-off. May 14, 2015 at 1:28

1 Answer 1

1

You may improve your performance by using xml exist, instead of extracting the values.

SELECT playId
from plays
where PlayFieldValues.exist('/PlayAttributes/PlayFields/PlayField[@ID = "Play.GenericInt1" and text()="25"]')=1

...but without any xml indexes this is still going to involve a table scan.

6
  • Thanks Mister, Appreciate your input. I am researching about xml indexes.
    – ess
    May 15, 2015 at 18:01
  • I would spend more time investigating materialising the values, xml indexes are not that great actually. May 15, 2015 at 18:05
  • materialising the values is good idea for new rows, but we are researching what to do with existing 6 million rows. any ideas?
    – ess
    May 15, 2015 at 18:18
  • Create Views over XML Columns, do you think I can try this? Please advice
    – ess
    May 15, 2015 at 18:58
  • I don't believe you can create an indexed view on an XML column, and just having a view defined would not impact performance for this use case in any way. May 15, 2015 at 22:34

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