SELECT multiple sensor values in one query

Question

Background

I have a couple of devices, each with a couple of sensors. I log these every now and then and stores them in a table described below. When someone requests a web page, I fetch a couple of these values (the latest logged) one by one and displays them to the user. But currently this takes too long time because there are too many values that needs to be fetched, the fetch takes about 8ms per value and in total we talk about around 300ms increase in total page load time - for a relatively good page.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SensorValues](
  [DeviceId] [int] NOT NULL,
  [SensorId] [int] NOT NULL,
  [SensorValue] [int] NOT NULL,
  [Date] [int] NOT NULL, --- stored as unixtime
CONSTRAINT [PK_SensorValues] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
(
  [DeviceId] ASC,
  [SensorId] ASC,
  [Date] DESC
);

The table is partitioned weekly on the Date column.

What I do now

So, what I do is the following. I select the largest value in each partition that is before the current date/time. and pick out the largest value.

SELECT TOP (1) ca.SensorValue, ca.Date
  FROM sys.partitions AS p
  CROSS APPLY
  (
  SELECT TOP (1) v.Date, v.SensorValue
    FROM SensorValue AS v
    WHERE $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(v.Date) = p.[partition_number]
    AND v.DeviceId = @fDeviceId
    AND v.SensorId = @fSensorId
    AND v.Date <= @fDate
    ORDER BY v.Date DESC
  ) AS ca
  WHERE p.[partition_number] <= $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(@fDate)
  AND p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.SensorValues', N'U')
  AND p.index_id = 1
  ORDER BY p.[partition_number] DESC, ca.Date DESC;

What I want to do

I want to select all values in one query. E.g. select the latest value for DeviceId=1 and SensorId=1,2,3,4,5. I have come up with the following so far, where I select with the IN keyword to get values for multiple sensors. However, I still need to group them and sort out the one with the highest date. I'm thinking of adding a GROUP BY clause, but don't know how to get it right (the ones I've tried has failed so far).

SELECT ca.SensorValue, ca.Date
  FROM sys.partitions AS p
  CROSS APPLY
  (
  SELECT TOP (1) v.Date, v.SensorValue
    FROM SensorValue AS v
    WHERE $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(v.Date) = p.[partition_number]
    AND v.DeviceId = @fDeviceId
    AND v.SensorId IN (@fSensorId1, @fSensorId2, @fSensorId3)
    AND v.Date <= @fDate
    ORDER BY v.Date DESC
  ) AS ca
  WHERE p.[partition_number] <= $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(@fDate)
  AND p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.SensorValues', N'U')
  AND p.index_id = 1
  ORDER BY p.[partition_number] DESC, ca.Date DESC;

Answer 1

First things first, I notice that your 'what I do now' query:

SELECT TOP (1)
    ca.SensorValue,
    ca.Date
FROM sys.partitions AS p
CROSS APPLY
(
    SELECT TOP (1)
        v.Date, 
        v.SensorValue
    FROM SensorValues AS v
    WHERE 
        $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(v.Date) = p.[partition_number]
        AND v.DeviceId = @fDeviceId
        AND v.SensorId = @fSensorId
        AND v.Date <= @fDate
    ORDER BY 
        v.Date DESC
) AS ca
WHERE 
    p.[partition_number] <= $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(@fDate)
    AND p.[object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.SensorValues', N'U')
    AND p.index_id = 1
ORDER BY
    p.[partition_number] DESC, 
    ca.Date DESC;

...produces an execution plan like this:

This execution plan has an estimated total cost of 0.02 units. Over 50% of this estimated cost is the final Sort, running in Top-N mode. Now estimates are just that, but sorts can be expensive in general, so let's remove it without changing the semantics:

SELECT TOP (1)
    ca.SensorId,
    ca.SensorValue,
    ca.Date
FROM
(
    -- Partition numbers
    SELECT DISTINCT
        partition_number = prv.boundary_id
    FROM
        sys.partition_functions AS pf
    JOIN sys.partition_range_values AS prv ON
        prv.function_id = pf.function_id
    WHERE
        pf.name = N'SensorValues_Date_PF'
        AND prv.boundary_id <= $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(@fDate)
) AS p
CROSS APPLY
    (
    SELECT TOP (1)
        v.Date,
        v.SensorValue,
        v.SensorId
    FROM dbo.SensorValues AS v
    WHERE
        $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(v.Date) = p.partition_number
        AND v.DeviceId = @fDeviceId
        AND v.SensorId = @fSensorId
        AND v.Date <= @fDate
    ORDER BY
        v.Date DESC
  ) AS ca
ORDER BY
    p.partition_number DESC,
    ca.Date DESC

Now the execution plan has no blocking operators, and no sorts in particular. The estimated cost of the new query plan below is 0.01 units and the total cost is distributed evenly over the data access methods:

With the improvement in place, all we need to produce a result for each Sensor ID is to make a list of Sensor IDs and APPLY the previous code to each one:

SELECT
    PerSensor.SensorId,
    PerSensor.SensorValue,
    PerSensor.Date
FROM 
(
    -- Sensor ID list
    VALUES 
        (@fSensorId1),
        (@FSensorId2),
        (@FSensorId3)
) AS Sensor (Id)
CROSS APPLY
(
    -- Optimized code applied to each sensor
    SELECT TOP (1)
        ca.SensorId,
        ca.SensorValue,
        ca.Date
    FROM
    (
        -- Partition numbers
        SELECT DISTINCT
            partition_number = prv.boundary_id
        FROM
            sys.partition_functions AS pf
        JOIN sys.partition_range_values AS prv ON
            prv.function_id = pf.function_id
        WHERE
            pf.name = N'SensorValues_Date_PF'
            AND prv.boundary_id <= $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(@fDate)
    ) AS p
    CROSS APPLY
        (
        SELECT TOP (1)
            v.Date,
            v.SensorValue,
            v.SensorId
        FROM dbo.SensorValues AS v
        WHERE
            $PARTITION.SensorValues_Date_PF(v.Date) = p.partition_number
            AND v.DeviceId = @fDeviceId
            AND v.SensorId = Sensor.Id--@fSensorId1
            AND v.Date <= @fDate
        ORDER BY
            v.Date DESC
      ) AS ca
    ORDER BY
        p.partition_number DESC,
        ca.Date DESC
) AS PerSensor;

The query plan is:

Estimated query plan cost for three Sensor IDs is 0.011 - half that of the original single-sensor plan.