Monday, December 30, 2013

Avoiding product joins

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How to eliminate product joins

What is product join?

Product join is one of the implementation methods of an SQL JOIN operation.
Do not mix up with cross join (Cartesian product), which is one type of SQL joins.

SQL join types, eg.: inner join, left outer join, full outer join, cross (Cartesian) join
Join implementation types, eg.: nested join, merge join, hash join, product join.

Product join (of tables A and B ) is the most simple method of join implementation:
  • Produce each of <A;B> record combinations, say take each records from A singly, and match it with each records of B one-by-one.
  • Test the join condition on each produced <A;B> record pairs, and eliminate those combinations where the condition fails.
The two steps are often combined, and the "testing phase" is executed right after a record combination is generated, and the non valid combinations right after dropped. This saves a lot of temp space.

Why don't we like it?

Well, it has a really bad reputation. It is slow, stuffs CPU, etc.
Yes, it usually is, does. It is the brute force method for executing a join, with costs in order of N*M (where N, M are the record numbers of the joinable tables)

Indeed there are situations when it is the best choice, or the only feasible way.

When is it good/necessary?

Please note that product join is the method what is always applicable, independently of all circumstances.

Good

Product join is typically simple, dumb and slow algorithm, this is why we do not like it, but has a very important advantage: requires no pre-processing.* This is why we LIKE IT:)
If we have to join a really large table to a very small table (couple of records) product join is far the most effective method, since the sort of a very large table ( order of N*logN ) can cost a lot, while joining to 1-2 records is really not a big deal.

Necessary

There are join situations when the only way to go is the product join. Why? Because of the join condition. The "clever joins" (merge, hash) require some information and/or condition that somehow enables to cheat the A x B comparisons: reduce them to the ones that really necessary, and be done in a more effective manner.

* OK, in Teradata this means: only requires that the matchable records from both tables must be on the same AMP. This implies the "small" table to be duplicated to all AMPs.

Merge join example

from A
join  B on A.customer_id = B.customer_id
         and A.trx_dt between B.eff_dt and B.exp_dt

  • Customer_id clause is in AND condition with the others
  • Customer_id is selective enough that hash(customer_id) can reduce the comparisons reasonably
  • Note that A and B must be sorted (re-sorted) by the hash of customer_id

Product join example

from A
join   B on substr(A.telephone_no,1,B.prefix_length) = B.telephone_no_prefix

  • There is no comparison reducing partial-condition
  • Note that neither of the tables required to be sorted in a specific order.
Unavoidable product joins
  • Non-eqality condition
  • Function used (eg. substr())
  • Dependent expression is used (eg. A.x+B.y = A.z)
  • Cross join: intentional Cartesian product

Avoidable product joins

Data type mismatch

The merge join example above works only if customer_no in A and B tables have the same "style" data types, since their hash value will match only in this case. Say hash(13674) <> hash('13674'), however integer is compatible with decimal, and char is compatible with varchar.
Pay attention on data type consistence during physical data modeling. 
  • Use domains to eliminate the possibility of mismatch
  • Align to used data types when defining temp tables, or use "create table as ..." statements
  • If you cannot avoid mismatch, relocate the necessary data to temp tables with proper data types during processing.

OR condition

Let's assume the following join condition:
select ...
from A
join  B on A.col1 = B.Col1
        OR 

           A.Col2 = B.Col2
    This is equivalent, w/o compulsory product join :

    select ... 
    from A
    join  B on A.col1 = B.Col1 

    UNION 
    select ...
    from A
    join  B on A.Col2 = B.Col2


    Missing/stale statistics

    As I mentioned before product join is the most effective join between a very large and a really small (couple of records) table. If the optimizer thinks that a table is pretty small, but it is not indeed, it may choose a product join in all good faith, misleaded by a stale or missing statistics.
    Define and keep fresh those statistics by the optimizer can determine the size of the joinable record sets  properly.

    How to find avoidable product joins

    It is not trivial to list the avoidable product joins. Practically all product joins are required to be examined one-by-one and judged to be avoidable or not. And if avoidable, what to do for.
    I strongly recommend to use PRISE Tuning Assistant for both finding the product joins and analyzing the possibility and necessity of elimination:

    • List top consuming queries with product join(s)
    • Check the PROD JOIN steps: which tables are processed that way
    • Check those join conditions for cases described above

    What to do if cannot be avoided?

    In this case I recommend to try the decomposition, described here.
    It can help reducing the number of comparisons, saving CPU and runtime.

    Have a successful optimization and happy new year!


    Sponsored by PRISE Ltd.
    www.prisetools.com

    Thursday, December 19, 2013

    DBQL analysis II. - Monitor "Top skewed/impact queries"

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    www.prisetools.com

    Find Skewed CPU and I/O in DBQL

    Please note that the solutions found in the article works on the DBQL logs, which covers only that users' activity, for whom the logging is switched on.

    About Skew

    If you are not comfortably familiar with Skewness or DBQL, please read the corresponding posts before:

    TeradataTuning - Skewness
    TeradataTuning - DBQL I
    As you can see the difference between Impact[Resource] and Total[Resource] is a net technological loss, which should be minimized.

    Skewness is a good indicator for highlight those workload that wastes lots of valuable CPU and I/O resources because of inefficient parallelism.

    Find bad queries in DBQL

    With this SQL you can filter top impacting queries  (replace the date value or maybe you have to adjust the date filtering according to local settings):

    select  top 50
      ProcID
    , QueryID
    , AMPCPUTime
    , MaxAMPCPUTime * (hashamp () + 1) CPUImpact
    , CAST (100 - ((AmpCPUTime / (hashamp () + 1)) * 100 / NULLIFZERO (MaxAMPCPUTime)) AS INTEGER) "CPUSkew%"
    , TotalIOCount
    , MaxAMPIO * (hashamp () + 1) IOImpact
    , CAST (100 - ((TotalIOCount / (hashamp () + 1)) * 100 / NULLIFZERO (MaxAMPIO) ) AS INTEGER) "IOSkew%"
    , AMPCPUTime * 1000 / nullifzero (TotalIOCount) LHR
    , TotalIOCount / nullifzero (AMPCPUTime * 1000) RHL
    , ParserCPUTime
    , Queryband
    , Substr(QueryText,1,2000) QueryText
    from
    /* For archived DBQL
        dbql_arch.dbqlogtbl_hst where logdate=1131201
    and ampcputime>0
    */
    /* For online DBQL*/
        dbc.dbqlogtbl where
        cast(cast(starttime as char(10)) as date) = '2013-12-18' (date)
        and ampcputime>0
    order by CPUImpact desc


    Explanation of extra fields:
    ParserCPUTime: Time parser spent on producing the execution plan. This can be high if SQL is too complex or too many random AMP sampling has to be done.
    LHR/RHL: Larry Higa ( inverse Larry Higa) index. Empirical index that shows the CPU vs I/O rate. By experience it should be usually around one (can be different depending on your system configuration, but is a constant). If it is far from 1, that indicates CPU or I/O dominance, which means unbalanced resource consumption, but it is a different dimension that skew.
    QueryBand: Labels that sessions use to identify themselves within the DBQL logs
    QueryText: First 200 characters of the query (depending on DBQL log settings)

    OK, we've listed the terrible top consumers, but what's next?
    Have to identify those queries. If your ETL and Analytics software is configured to user QueryBand properly (this area deserves a separate post...) , you can find which job or report issued that SQL, anyway, you can see the QueryText field.

    If you want to get the full SQL text, select it from the DBQLSQLTbl (SQL logging needs to be switched on), replace the appropriate <procid> and <queryid> values:

    select SQLTextInfo from dbc.dbqlsqltbl where procid=<procid> and queryid=<queryid>
    order by SQLRowNo asc


    You will get the SQL in several records, broken up to 30K blocks, simply concatenate them. Unfortunately the SQL will have very ugly make up, you can use PRISE Tuning Assistant to beautify and highlight it for easy reading.

    System level Skewness

    Totals

    We've found those bad queries, nice. But what can we say about the whole system? What is the total parallel efficiency? Can we report how much resources were wasted due to bad parallel efficiency?
    The answer is: yes, we can estimate quite closely. The exact value we cannot calculate because DBQL does not log AMP information for the query execution, but the most important metrics.
    We can not calculate that situation when more skewed queries run the same time, but have peaks on different AMPs. This reduces the system level resource wasting, but is hard to calculate with, however its probability and effect is negligible now.

    select
      sum(AMPCPUTime) AMPCPUTimeSum
    , sum(MaxAMPCPUTime * (hashamp () + 1)) CPUImpactSum
    , sum(TotalIOCount) TotalIOCountSum
    , sum(MaxAMPIO * (hashamp () + 1)) IOImpactSum
    , cast(100 - (AMPCPUTimeSum / CPUImpactSum) * 100 as integer) "CPUSkew%"
    , cast(100 - (TotalIOCountSum / IOImpactSum) * 100 as integer) "IOSkew%"
    from
    /* For archived DBQL
        dbql_arch.dbqlogtbl_hst where logdate = '2013-12-18' (date)     

        and (ampcputime>0 or TotalIOCount > 0)
    */
    /* For online DBQL*/
        dbc.dbqlogtbl where
        cast(cast(starttime as char(10)) as date) = '2013-12-18' (date)
        and (ampcputime>0 or TotalIOCount > 0)


    Look at the last two columns. That percent of your CPU and I/O goes to the sink...

    Top bad guys

    OK, let's check how many queries accumulate 5%,10%,25%,50%,75%,90% of this loss?
    Here you are (CPU version, transform for I/O implicitly):

    select 'How many queries?' as "_",min(limit5) "TOP5%Loss",min(limit10) "TOP10%Loss",min(limit25) "TOP25%Loss",min(limit50) "TOP50%Loss",min(limit75) "TOP75%Loss",min(limit90) "TOP90%Loss", max(rnk) TotalQueries, sum(ResourceTotal) "TotalResource", sum(ResourceImpact) "ImpactResource"
    from
    (
    select
     case when ResRatio < 5.00 then null else rnk end limit5
    ,case when ResRatio < 10.00 then null else rnk end limit10
    ,case when ResRatio < 25.00 then null else rnk end limit25
    ,case when ResRatio < 50.00 then null else rnk end limit50
    ,case when ResRatio < 75.00 then null else rnk end limit75
    ,case when ResRatio < 90.00 then null else rnk end limit90
    ,rnk
    , ResourceTotal
    , ResourceImpact
    from
    (
    select
      sum(ResourceLoss) over (order by ResourceLoss desc ) totalRes
    , sum(ResourceLoss) over (order by ResourceLoss desc  rows unbounded preceding) subtotalRes
    , subtotalRes *100.00 / totalRes Resratio
    , sum(1) over (order by ResourceLoss desc  rows unbounded preceding) rnk
    , ResourceTotal
    , ResourceImpact
    from
    (
    select
      AMPCPUTime ResourceTotal
    , (MaxAMPCPUTime * (hashamp () + 1)) ResourceImpact
    ,  ResourceImpact - ResourceTotal ResourceLoss
    /* For archived DBQL
    from dbql_arch.dbqlogtbl_hst where logdate=1131207
    and ampcputime>0
    */
    /* For online DBQL*/
    from dbc.dbqlogtbl where
    cast(cast(starttime as char(10)) as date) = '2013-12-18' (date)
    and ampcputime>0
    ) x
    ) y
    ) z
    group by 1



    I expect you are a bit shocked now, how few queries waste how much golden resources.
    I think we will agree that it is worth to tune those dozen of queries, and you save in orders of 100K..MUSD for your company annually, am I right?

    PRISE Tuning Assistant helps you to find those queries and to get the hang of how to accelerate them.

    Typical reasons of skewness - in a nutshell

    • Skewed tables: Bad choice of PI, Skewed data 
    • Bad execution plans (typically skewed redistributions)
      • Bad data model (normalization,data types,PI, etc.)
      • Missing or stale statistics
      • Too many joins (break up the query!)
    • Hash collision (load time problem)

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    www.prisetools.com

    Interpreting Skewness

    What does Skew metric mean?

    Overview

    You can see this word "Skewness" or "Skew factor" in a lot of places regarding Teradta: documents, applications, etc. Skewed table, skewed cpu. It is something wrong, but what does it explicitly mean? How to interpret it?

    Let's do some explanation and a bit simple maths.

    Teradata is a massive parallel system, where uniform units (AMPs) do the same tasks on that data parcel they are responsible for. In an ideal world all AMPs share the work equally, no one must work more than the average. The reality is far more cold, it is a rare situation when this equality (called "even distribution") exists.
    It is obvious that uneven distribution will cause wrong efficiency of using the parallel infrastructure.

    But how bad is the situation? Exactly that is what Skewness characterizes.

    Definitions

    Let "RESOURCE" mean the amount of resource (CPU, I/O, PERM space) consumed by an AMP.
    Let AMPno is the number of AMPs in the Teradata system.

    Skew factor := 100 - ( AVG ( "RESOURCE" ) / NULLIFZERO ( MAX ("RESOURCE") ) * 100 )

    Total[Resource] := SUM("RESOURCE")

    Impact[Resource] := MAX("RESOURCE") * AMPno

    Parallel Efficiency := Total[Resource] / Impact[Resource] * 100

    or with some transformation:

    Parallel Efficiency := 100 - Skew factor

    Analysis

    Codomain

    0 <= "Skew factor" < 100

    "Total[Resource]" <= "Impact[Resource]"

    0<"Parallel Efficiency"<=100

    Meaning

    Skew factor : This percent of the consumed real resources are wasted
    Eg. an 1Gbytes table with skew factor of 75 will allocate 4Gbytes*

    Total[Resource] :Virtual resource consumption, single sum of individual resource consumptions , measured on  AMPs as independent systems

    Impact[Resource] :Real resource consumption impacted on the parallel infrastructure

    Parallel Efficiency : As it says. Eg. Skew=80: 20%

    * Theoretically if there is/are complementary characteristics resource allocation (consumes that less resources on that AMP where my load has excess) that can compensate the parallel inefficiency from system point of view, but the probability of it tends to zero.

    Illustration



    Skew := Yellow / (Yellow + Green) * 100 [percent]


    The "Average" level indicates the mathematical average of AMP level resource consumptions (Total[Resource]), while "Peak" is maximum of AMP level resource consumptions: the real consumption from "parallel system view" (Impact[Resource])

    On finding skewed tables I will write a post later.
    PRISE Tuning Assistant helps you to find queries using CPU or I/O and helps to get rid of skewness.


    Tuesday, December 17, 2013

    Using Partitioned Primary Index

    How to use partitioned primary index (PPI)

    This post is about row partitioning and will not discuss columnar.

    What is partitioning?

    To explain it correctly, let's get back to the basics...
    Each Teradata tables (except NoPI type) have "Primary Index", aka. PI, which is not physical index, but rather a logical construction: one or more columns of the table which give the input for hashing method. The hash value determines two things:
    • Which AMP will store the record
    • Storing order of the records within the AMPs
    If the PI is non-partitioned then the records are stored in order of hash value of PI.

    If you use (row) partitioning, you define it at the Primary Index.
    In this case Teradata will associate a 2bytes or 2/8 bytes (at V14.10) "partition code" to the record*, and the storing order is <partition code>,<hash_value> (aka. RowKey).
    That way partitions are not sub-tables or other physical objects, but only influence the record storing order.

    * This implies that no more than 64k(2bytes)/9Q(8bytes) partitions can exist. For details read the appropriate Teradata version's documentation.

    What is the difference between PPI and NUSI?

    NUSI (Non Unique Secondary Index) can serve as similar purposes, but is absolutely different.
    NUSI is a separate subtable, with analogue PI to base table, but different (value) ordering.
    For details please read Teradata documentation.

    How to define?

    Non partitioned table:
    create table tablePI
    (
      Trx_id Integer
    , Trx_dt Date
    )
    PRIMARY INDEX (Trx_id)


    Partitioned table:
    create table tablePPI (   Trx_id Integer
    , Trx_dt Date
    )
    PRIMARY INDEX (Trx_id
    , Trx_dt**)
    PARTITION BY RANGE_N(Trx_dt BETWEEN DATE '2010-01-01' AND DATE '2013-12-31' EACH INTERVAL '1' DAY , NO RANGE, UNKNOWN)


    Highlights
    • **Partitioning key (Trx_dt here) can be part of the PI or not. This is very important, see below.
    • Partitioning can be single or multiple (MLPPI) levels***
    • RANGE_N or CASE_N functions can be used for determining partition code
    • RANGE_N function has constant interval endpoints and partition length.
    • NO RANGE and UNKNOWN partitions will store the out-of-intervals and null value records respectively
    ***MLPPI is a technique when multiple or nested partitioning is defined on the table. Logically it looks like sub-partitions, but in practice it only influences the calculation of partition code values, which is still a linear 2/8 bytes value overall the table.

    Pros - Cons of using PPI

    PPI is a very useful feature, but not a silver bullet to use it everywhere. Look the trade offs:
    • (+) Partition elimination
      Only the relevant partitions are scanned while accessing data
    • (+) Interval filtering is supported
    • (+) Accelerates INSERTs
      If we load increment data into a populated table. Very likely less data blocks are affected, since few partitions are involved (if date is the partitioning basis) 
    • (-) 2 or 8 bytes extra space allocation per record
    • (-) Compression is not allowed on PartKey column
    • (-) PartKey inclusion problem (see below)
    • (-) Partition elimination works only with literals
      Subselects cause full table scans

    Design aspects

    RANGE_N or CASE_N

    These functions are used to define partitioning. RANGE_N is for concentrate date (integer) intervals into partitions, while CASE_N is like a CASE-WHEN-THEN expression, where the outcome is the partition.

    Typically RANGE_N is used when we partition a transaction table by its date or timestamp, while CASE_N is popular in special cases like categorizing. You can use more columns in the logical expression, but take care, all of them must be used in filter condition to enable partition elimination.

    RANGE_N: what interval size?

    It depends on the granularity of the data, granularity of filtering and how long interval should be stored in the table. Usually daily partitioning is ideal.

    RANGE_N: interval extension or intervals in advance?

    If we load transactional data into our partitioned table, the date column we use as partition key is populated later and later dates, while we have a finite partition range definition.
    Partition ranges can be added to RANGE_N definition periodically (depends on version), or we can define partitions in far advance. (365 partitions required for a year, 65k partitions cover ~ 180years, which is more than enough) Note that empty partitions do not allocate space.

    One of the methods above should be applied, otherwise the NO RANGE partition will grow extensively, which will cause performance degradation due to less effective partition elimination.

    Partitioning Key: include in PI or not?

    This is the funny point.
    Partitioning key is the column(s) that determines the partition, say used in the RANGE_N/CASE_N definition. We can include it in the Primary Index or not, we decide.

    Let's take an example. We have a master-detail pair of tables, nicely "equi-PI"-ed for effective join:

    CREATE TABLE ORDER_HEAD
    (
      ORDER_NO INTEGER
    , ORDER_DT DATE
    ) UNIQUE PRIMARY INDEX (ORDER_NO);

    CREATE TABLE ORDER_ITEM
    (
      ORDER_NO INTEGER
    , ORDER_ITEM_NO
    , PROD_NO INTEGER
    ) PRIMARY INDEX (ORDER_NO);


    We modify ORDER_HEAD's PI:
    UNIQUE PRIMARY INDEX (ORDER_NO, ORDER_DT)

    PARTITION BY RANGE_N(ORDER_DT BETWEEN DATE '2010-01-01' AND DATE '2013-12-31' EACH INTERVAL '1' DAY , NO RANGE, UNKNOWN)

    Should we include ORDER_DT or not? Which is better, what is the difference?
    • Not include
      ORDER_HEAD and ORDER_ITEM tables will have similar AMP distribution, but different physical order within the AMPs.
      Each join operation requires sort of the selected ORDER_HEAD records in spool, or ORDER_ITEMS table will be merge joined against each selected non empty partitions of ORDER_HEAD sequentially (called sliding-window merge join)
    • Include
      ORDER_HEAD and ORDER_ITEM tables will have different AMP distribution, each join operation requires redistribution.Why do we not use the same PI at ORDER_ITEM? Because we do not have that column there.
    Neither of the above is acceptable in many cases. What should we do? In this case I would copy the ORDER_DT to the ORDER_ITEM table also, and use the same "Included" version of PI. Requires some more space, logic in load time, but great gain while accessing data.

    Use cases

    Filtering

    This select will eliminate all partitions except those three:
    select * from ORDER_HEAD where order_dt between '2013-12-12' (date) and '2013-12-14' (date);

    This select will generate all rows scan:
    select * from ORDER_HEAD where cast( order_dt as char(7)) = '2013-12';

    This select will generate all rows scan* either (sub-query):
    select * from ORDER_HEAD  where order_dt in (select max(calendar_date) from sys_calendar.calendar  where year_of_calendar=2013 and month_of_year=5);
    Why? Optimizer has to determine which partitions to be accessed in time of generating execution plan. That time it cannot know what is the result of the subquery. That is it.

    * I got a proper comment on this option to double check. Yes, right, this information is a out-of-date. With actual versions of Teradata (V13.10..V14.10) I experienced 3 different results:
    • Full scan
      Eg. sub-query contains a "group by"
    • Dynamic partition elimination
      Sub-query is simple, indicates "enhanced by dynamic partition elimination" section in the plan
    • Plan-time partititon elimination
      Literal condition or very simple sub query. Parsing time evaluation enables PO to determine which partitions to be scanned.  Plan: "...We do an all-AMPs ... step from 3 partitions of...". Do not really know exactly what decides between full scan, dynamic- or plan-time elimination... Explanations welcome.

    Join

    We join two tables: T1 and T2. The table shows what happens if they are partitioned, not partitioned and the partitioning key is included or not in the PI:

    T2

    T1
    PI:(a) PI:(a) PART(b) PI:(a,b) PART(b)
    PI:(a) Join: T1.a=T2.a
    RowHash match
    PI:(a) PART(b) Join: T1.a=T2.a
    T1 sorted by hash(a) or
    Sliding-window MJ
    Join: T1.a=T2.a
    T1&T2 sorted by hash(a)
    or Sliding-window MJ
    (NxM combinations)
    Join: T1.a=T2.a and T1.b=T2.b
    T1&T2 sorted by RowKey
    RowKey based MJ
    PI:(a,b) PART(b) Join: T1.a=T2.a
    T1 Redistributed & sorted
    by hash(a)
    Join: T1.a=T2.a
    T1 Redistributed by hash(a)
    T2 sorted by hash(a) and MJ
    Join: T1.a=T2.a and T1.b=T2.b
    T2 Redistributed and sorted by RowKey
    RowKey based MJ
    Join: T1.a=T2.a and T1.b=T2.b
    RowKey based MJ


    Insert

    Let's take a transaction table like ORDERS. In practice we load it periodically (eg. daily) with the new increment which is typically focused to a short interval of transaction date/time. If the ORDERS table is not partitioned, then the outstanding hashing algorithm will spread them all over the data blocks of the table evenly, therefore Teradata has to modify far more data blocks than the increment was reside in.

    But if the ORDERS table is partitioned, then the physical order of the records is primarily determined by the partition key. This means that the increment will reside in very few partitions, close together, and the insert operation requires approx the same number of blocks to be written than the increment was in.

    For more details on PPIs please refer the documentation of the appropriate Teradata version.

    To be continued...

    Tuesday, December 10, 2013

    DBQL analysis I. - Monitor "Top CPU consumers"

    Sponsored by PRISE Ltd.
    www.prisetools.com

    CPU usage distribution

    About DBQL

    What is it?


    DataBase Query Logging.
    It is a nice feature of Teradata RDBMS, which comprehensively logs the issued queries execution - if it is switched on.

    Configuration can be checked/administered eg. in the Teradata tools or from DBC.DBQLRuleTbl.
    Logging can be set on global/user level, and in respect of details (see DBQL tables)

    For detailed information please refer Teradata documentation of your version.

    DBQL tables


    Table Content
    DBQLogTbl Central table, 1 record for each query.
    DBQLSQLTbl Whole SQL command, broken up to 30k blocks
    DBQLStepTbl Execution steps of the query, one row for each step.
    DBQLObjTbl Objects participated in the query. Logged on different levels (db,table, column, index, etc.)
    DBQLExplainTbl English explain text, broken up to 30k blocks
    DBQLXMLTbl Explain in XML format, broken up to 30k blocks
    DBQLSummaryTbl PEs' aggregated table, which accounts on the desired level.

    DBQL tables logically organized into 1:N structure, where DBQLogTbl is the master entity and others (except DBQLSummaryTbl) are the children.
    Join fields are the ProcID and QueryId together, eg:
    ...
    from DBQLogTbl a
    join   DBQLStepTbl b on a.ProcID=b.ProcID and a.QueryID = b.QueryID
    ...
    Unfortunately PI of DBQL tables are not in sync with logical PK-FK relation in (also in latest V14.10), therefore JOIN-ed selects against online DBQL tables are not optimal.

    Cost of using DBQL

    DBQL basically consumes negligible amount of processing resources, since it has cached&batch write and generates data proportional to issued queries (flush rate is DBScontrol parameter).
    It is important to regularly purge/archive them from the DBC tables, Teradata has a recommendation for it. This ensures that PERM space consumption of the DBQL remains low.
    In an environment where ~1M SQLs are issued a day, comprehensive logging generates  ~8..10G of DBQL data daily w/o XML and Summary. Less SQLs generate proportionally less data.

    It is worth to switch on all option except XML and Summary, since the first generates huge data volume (~makes it double), and the second is similar to Acctg info. If you want to utilize them, they should be switched on, of course.

    What is it good for?

    It contains:
    • Query run time, duration
    • Consumed resources
    • Environment info (user, default db, etc)
    • SQL text
    • Explain
    • Step resource info
    • Objects involved
    • Etc.
    One can get a lot of useful aggregated and query specific tuning information, some of them I will share in the blog.

    CPU usage distribution info

    (Everything applies to I/O also, just replace CPU with I/O, AMPCPUTime with TotalIOCount...)

    Do you think Query optimization is rewarding?


    Yes, I know it is hard work to find out why is ONE query run sub-optimally, and what to do with it.

    But guess how many queries consume how many percent of the processing resources (CPU) within a whole day's workload.
    Tip it and write down for CPU%: 5%, 10%, 25% and 50%

    And now run the query below, which will result it to you. (replace the date value or maybe you have to adjust the date filtering according to local settings)

    select 'How many queries?' as "_",min(limit5) "TOP5%CPU",min(limit10) "TOP10%CPU",min(limit25) "TOP25%CPU",min(limit50) "TOP50%CPU", max(rnk) TotalQueries
    from
    (
    select
    case when CPURatio < 5.00 then null else rnk end limit5
    ,case when CPURatio < 10.00 then null else rnk end limit10
    ,case when CPURatio < 25.00 then null else rnk end limit25
    ,case when CPURatio < 50.00 then null else rnk end limit50
    ,rnk
    from
    (
    select
      sum(ampcputime) over (order by ampcputime desc ) totalCPU
    , sum(ampcputime) over (order by ampcputime desc  rows unbounded preceding) subtotalCPU
    , subtotalCPU *100.00 / totalCPU CPUratio
    , sum(1) over (order by ampcputime desc  rows unbounded preceding) rnk
    from
    (
    select *

    /* For archived DBQL
    from dbql_arch.dbqlogtbl_hst where logdate=1131201 

    and ampcputime>0
    */
    /* For online DBQL*/
    from dbc.dbqlogtbl where
    cast(cast(starttime as char(10)) as date) = '2013-12-10' (date) 

    and ampcputime>0
    ) x
    ) y
    ) z
    group by 1



    Are you surprised?
    I bet:
    • Less than 10 queries will consume 5% of the CPU
    • Less than  1% of the queries will consume 50% of the CPU
    Let's calculate.
    How much does your Teradata system cost a year? It is all for storage and processing capacity.
    If you can save eg. X% of CPU&I/O and X% storage using MVC optimization, you saved X% of the price of the Teradata system, by:
    • Improved user experience (earlier load, faster responses)
    • Resources for additional reports and applications
    • Enable postponing a very expensive Teradata hardware upgrade

    PRISE Tuning Assistant helps you to find those queries and to get the hang of how to accelerate them.

    Sponsored by PRISE Ltd.
    www.prisetools.com