Dynamic sql and loops

Question

I've got some batch job processes that are all built on the same pattern - load new data into a temp table, figure out what operations need to be done based on the data in the temp table, and then run some dynamic sql to shuffle the data in the temp tables into the final tables.

These operations can ultimately be operating on, say, 100 million rows.

The original code, made a dynamic INSERT statement and then ran sp_executeSql in a WHILE loop in batches of 100,000

I thought thousands of invocations of sp_executeSql might be more expensive than executing 1 statement with the WHILE loop built in, so I tried this instead. To my great surprise, it took 8 times longer to execute than running EXEC sp_executeSql many thousands of times.

Anyone have an idea why doing a WHILE in a dynamic sql statement would perform so badly?

SET @sql = '
DECLARE @minRowID int = 0, @maxRowID int = @batchSize, @totalInsertedCounts bigint = 0;
WHILE (1=1)
BEGIN
     INSERT INTO ' + @destinationTable + ' ('+ @columnList +')
     SELECT ' + @columnsForSelect + '
     FROM ' + @fromTable + ' AS D (NOLOCK)
     INNER JOIN ' + @workTable + ' AS W (NOLOCK) ON D.[RowID] = W.[RowID_Source]
     WHERE W.RowID > @minRowID AND W.RowID <= @maxRowID
     OPTION (MAXDOP 1)
     SET @counts = @@ROWCOUNT
     CHECKPOINT;
    IF @counts = 0 BREAK

    SET @totalInsertedCounts += @counts
    IF (@totalInsertedCounts % 500000 = 0)
    BEGIN
    DECLARE @percent float = ROUND(@totalInsertedCounts * 100 / CAST(@totalCounts as float), 3);
    DECLARE @percentStr varchar(20) = CAST (@percent as varchar);
    RAISERROR(''Insert completed percent: %s'', 10,1, @percentStr) WITH NOWAIT;
    END

    SET @minRowID += @batchSize
    SET @maxRowID += @batchSize

END
SET @counts = @totalInsertedCounts;
'

EDIT:

Based on the comment, I got the plans for the while-in and single statement (with many sp_executeSql execution).

https://www.brentozar.com/pastetheplan/?id=rkDUlLKb5 - while loop runs 1 dynamic statement

https://www.brentozar.com/pastetheplan/?id=S1sjxIFW5 - while loop in dynamic statement

Answer 1

It might be due to the query optimizer generating a new execution plan for each iteration of the loop as opposed to what happens when you execute the sp_executesql many times. Check one of the Remarks from the doc:

sp_executesql can be used instead of stored procedures to execute a Transact-SQL statement many times when the change in parameter values to the statement is the only variation. Because the Transact-SQL statement itself remains constant and only the parameter values change, the SQL Server query optimizer is likely to reuse the execution plan it generates for the first execution.

The WHILE might cause a different behavior resulting in bad performance. You should also check the execution plan from each method as it would improve your guesses when trying to tune a query.

See the following query from Understanding SQL Server query plan cache to check if an execution plan is being reused or not:

SELECT cplan.usecounts, cplan.objtype, qtext.text, qplan.query_plan
FROM sys.dm_exec_cached_plans AS cplan
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(plan_handle) AS qtext
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(plan_handle) AS qplan
ORDER BY cplan.usecounts DESC