Managing Relational and

Non-Relational Data

SQL Server – Locking, concurrency and performance

Post-Graduation in Enterprise Data Science & Analytics

 Agenda

• SQL Server Indexes

• Lock and Blocking

• SQL Server Isolation Modes (Additional Resources)

• DeadLocks (Additional Resources)

• Query Plans (Additional Resources)

• SQL Server Top New Features (Additional Resources)

2
 Indexes Overview

• Index Considerations

• Can dramatically increase query performance

• Adds overhead for index maintenance

• Best Practices

• Base design on real-world workloads

• SQL Profiler, DMV’s, Execution Plans

• Scenarios:

• Retrieving ranges of data

• Retrieving specific values

3
 SQL Server Index Types

• Clustered index

• Controls the physical order of rows

• Does not require disk space

• One per table (may include multiple columns)

• Created by default on tables’ Primary Key column

• Non-Clustered Index

• Physical data structures that facilitate data retrieval

• Can have many indexes

• Indexes may include many columns

• Uses cluster key or RID of a heap

4
Clustered Index vs Non-Clustered Index

5
 SQL Server Statistics

• Information about the distribution of the data

• Created on index keys

• Created on columns

• Created manually

• Cardinality

• By default, created automatically

• By default, maintained automatically

• Automatic maintenance might not enough

6
 SQL Server Statistics

• DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS(table, target)

• Header

• Density

• Histogram

7
Demo
Demo 1 – Clustered and Non-Clustered Indexes

8
 Locks and Blocking

• SQL Server uses locks, an internal memory structure, to provide

transactional integrity between transactions.

• When locks are held for a long period of time, they cause blocking

• One process must wait for the other process to finish with the data and release the lock
before the second process can continue

• Lock types

• Shared - Used for read operations that do not change or update data, such as a SELECT
statement

• Update - Used on resources that can be updated.

• Exclusive -Used for data-modification operations, such as INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE

• Intent - Used to establish a lock hierarchy

9
Lock Hierarchy

10
SQL Server – Row Update

USE AdventureWorks
GO

BEGIN TRANSACTION

UPDATE [Person].[Address]
SET AddressLine1 = 'Lisbon, Portugal'
WHERE AddressID = 2

-- COMMIT TRANSACTION

11
 SQL Server – Lock Escalation

• When a single Transact-SQL (T-

SQL) statement acquires at least
5,000 locks on a single table or
index.
• When the number of locks in an
instance of the Database Engine
exceeds memory or configuration
thresholds.
• If locks cannot be escalated
because of lock conflicts, the
Database Engine periodically
triggers lock escalation at every
1,250 new locks acquired.

12
 Viewing Blocking by Using DMVs

• sys.dm_tran_locks
• Replaces syslockinfo and sp_lock
• Each row has information about both the resource and the request
• request_status = WAIT implies blocking

• sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks
• blocking_session_id > 0

• sys.dm_exec_requests
• status = suspended
• blocking_session_id > 0

• sys.dm_exec_sessions
• Join with each of the above for session details (join on session_id)

13
Demo
Demo 2 – Locks and Blocking

14
Additional Resources

15
 Concurrency Concepts

• Concurrency: The ability for multiple processes to access or change shared

data at the same time

• Isolation: Database property that determines how transaction integrity is

visible to other users or processes

• Usually, concurrency decreases with more restrictive isolation levels

ISOLATION

CONCURRENCY

16
 Concurrency Issues

• Blocking

• Deadlock

• Dirty Read

• Non-Repeatable Read

• Phantom Read

17
 SERIALIZABLE Isolation Level

• Equivalent to (HOLDLOCK) table hint

• Shared locks on read rows are held until the end of the transaction

• Guarantees that all reads are repeatable, and that no new data can be
inserted until the transaction completes

• To prevent phantom reads, key range locks are used

• On tables with index support, locks are acquired on all keys spanning the query predicate
plus the next key value

• On heaps, table locks are acquired

• Best used for replicating stored procedure calls

• Use with caution – this option will cause blocking

18
 REPEATABLE READ Isolation Level

• Shared locks on read rows are held until the end of the transaction

• Guarantees that data rows previously read within a transaction will remain consistent
until the transaction ends

• Unlike SERIALIZABLE isolation level, shared locks are acquired only on rows read
• If a transaction reads a table multiple times, and another transaction inserts new rows to that table,
query results may be different

• Does not protect against phantom reads

• Best used when performing data changes while preventing changes to read data
rows
• Use with caution – this option will cause blocking

19
 READ UNCOMMITED Isolation Level

• Provides minimal concurrency controls

• Exclusive locks are acquired for modified rows

• No shared locks are acquired on read rows

• When attempting to read a row with an exclusive lock on it, query will read uncommitted data (dirty read)

• Equivalent to (NOLOCK) table hint

• Ideal choice for

• Historical reports

• Troubleshooting issues on PROD databases

• Queries where data accuracy is not critical

• READ UNCOMMITED and (NOLOCK) are not silver bullets to solve blocking issues.
Use as needed and understand their side effects

20
 READ COMMITED Isolation Level

• Default isolation level in SQL Server

• Exclusive locks are acquired for modified rows

• Concurrency controls on read rows vary depending on the READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT database

option

• When OFF, shared locks are acquired while reading data rows and released when the read is complete

• When ON, no shared locks are acquired and instead row versioning is used for concurrency control

• Best general-purpose isolation level

• Avoid long running transaction

• Keep explicit transaction as short as possible

• Supplement with (NOLOCK) table hints to minimize blocking

21
 SQL Server Isolation Levels Overview

Isolation level Dirty read Nonrepeatable read Phantom

Read uncommitted Yes Yes Yes
Read committed No Yes Yes
Repeatable read No No Yes
Serializable No No No

22
Demo
Demo 3 – Isolation Levels

23
 Deadlock

• Two or more processes holding resources in a circular locking chain

• SQL Server will detect deadlocks (not just lock deadlocks)

• How to identify
• Client error message

• Profiler trace

• Xevent

• Trace Flag 1222

• Most likely a design issue

• Different processes accessing resources in different orders

• Unnecessarily long transactions

• Poorly tuned queries

24
Deadlock

25
Deadlock Graph – Profile Trace

26
Demo
Demo 4 – DeadLocks

27
 Query Optimizer cost

SELECT * FROM
Sales.SalesOrderDetail
WHERE ProductID = 750
ORDER BY ProductID;

28
Demo
Demo 5 – Execution Plans

29
 SSMS Reports

• CPU bottlenecks (and what queries are consuming the most CPU)

• IO bottlenecks (and what queries are performing the most IO)

• Index recommendations generated by the query optimizer

(missing indexes)

• Blocking

• Latch contention

30
Demo
Demo 6 – SSMS Performance Dashboard

31
 SQL Server 2014 – Top New Features

• In-Memory OLTP Engine

• Memory optimization of selected tables and stored procedures (up to 30x

faster)

• AlwaysOn Enhancements

• Secondary replicas from four to eight.

• Asynchronous secondary replicas in Windows Azure.

• Offload reporting activity to Azure

32
 SQL Server 2014 – Top New Features

• Updateable Columnstore Indexes

• Delayed durability

• Buffer Pool Extension (using SSD)

• SQL Server Managed Backup to Windows Azure

33
 SQL Server 2016 – Top New Features

• Query Store

• Maintains a history of query execution plans with their performance data

• Polybase

• SQL Server connector to Hadoop (and Azure Blob Storage)

• Stretch Database (SQL Azure)

• JSON Support

34
 SQL Server 2016 - SQL Server Query Store

• Tracks:

• Query plans

• Runtime statistics

• Queries/plans history

• Helps find regressing queries

• Quickly find new queries with multiple plans

• Identify un-efficient plans so you can force a better plan

35
SQL Server 2016 - SQL Server Polybase - Hadoop

36
 SQL Server 2016 – Top New Features

• In-Memory tables improvements

• Supporting foreign keys, check and unique constraints and parallelism.

• Column store indexes support

• Dynamic Data Masking(DDM)

• R Comes to SQL Server

37
 SQL Server 2017 – Top New Features

• Python Support

• Scaling Out Integration Services

• Graph Database

• A Graph database allows you to store nodes and edges.

• Adaptive Query Plans

• Power BI reports in a SSRS instance

• SQL Server Runs on Windows, Linux and Docker Containers

38
 SQL Server 2019 – New Features

• SQL Server Database Engine

• Java language programmability extension

• SQL Server Machine Learning Services failover clusters

• New Polybase connectors

• New connectors for SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, and MongoDB

• SQL Server on Linux

• Machine Learning on Linux

• Replication support

• Support for the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC)

• Always On Availability Group on Docker containers with Kubernetes

39
 SQL Server 2019 – New Features

• SQL Server 2019 Big Data Clusters

• Deploy a Big Data cluster with SQL Server and Spark Linux containers on
Kubernetes

• Access your big data from HDFS

• Run Advanced analytics and machine learning with Spark

• Use Spark streaming to data to SQL data pools

40
SQL Server 2019 – New Polybase connectors

41
SQL Server 2019

42
SQL Server 2019

43
 SQL Server 2022

Azure Purview integration Seamless analytics over on-prem

operational data

Business continuity through Azure

44
 Summary

• SQL Server Indexes

• Lock and Blocking

• SQL Server Isolation Modes

• DeadLocks

• Query Plans (Additional Resources)

• SQL Server Top New Features (Additional Resources)

45
Obrigado!

Morada: Campus de Campolide, 1070-312 Lisboa, Portugal

Tel: +351 213 828 610 | Fax: +351 213 828 611