View vs. Table Valued Function vs. Multi-Statement Table Valued Function

August 13, 2008 at 8:36 am (TSQL) (performance, testing, Tests, TSQL, user defined function, view)

About five years ago, I was checking an app before it went to production. I hadn’t seen the app before then and a junior dba had worked with the developers designing and building the app. It didn’t use a single stored procedure or view. Instead, it was built entirely of multi-statement UDF’s. These UDF’s called other UDF’s which joined to UDF’s… It was actually a very beautiful design in terms of using the functions more or less like objects within the database. Amazing. It also would not, and could not, perform enough to function, let alone scale. It was a horror because they thought they were done and ready to go to production, but no one had ever tested more than a couple of rows of data in any of the tables. Of course, a couple of rows of data worked just fine. It was when we put in 10, 1000, a few million, that the thing came to a total and complete halt. We spent weeks arguing about the stupid thing. The developers instisted that since it was “possible” to do what they did, that, in fact, it was OK to do what they did.

Anyway, with the help of a Microsoft consultant, we finally cleaned up the app and got it on it’s feet. Ever since then, I’ve preached the dangers of the multi-statement table valued function. The thing to remember is, there are no statistics generated for these things. That means the optimizer thinks they return a single row of data. When they do only return a few rows, everything is fine. When they return even as little as a hundred rows, like the example I’m posting below, they stink.

Anyway, I boiled up this silly example because some developer accused me and several other DBA’s of spreading Fear, Undertainty, and Doubt because we suggested that the multi-statement UDF is something to avoid if possible. Actually, he pretty all but stated that we didn’t know what we were talking about. I was peeved. Hence this example. Feel free to check it out. Oh, and if you check the execution plans, note that the multi-statement UDF is marked as the least costly even though it actually performs twice as slow as the others. One more example of execution plans being wrong.

Here are the time results from one run of the view & UDF’s:

(99 row(s) affected)

SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 1 ms.

(99 row(s) affected)

SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 2 ms.

(99 row(s) affected)

SQL Server Execution Times:
CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 3 ms.

And the code to test for yourself:

CREATE TABLE dbo.Parent
(ParentId int identity(1,1)
,ParentDate datetime)

CREATE TABLE dbo.Child
(ChildId int identity(1,1)
,ParentId int
,ChildDate datetime)

DECLARE @i int
DECLARE @j int
SET @i = 1
SET @j = 1
WHILE @i < 100
BEGIN
INSERT INTO dbo.Parent
(ParentDate)
SELECT GETDATE()
WHILE @j < 100
BEGIN
INSERT INTO dbo.Child
(ParentId
,ChildDate)
SELECT @i
,GETDATE()
SET @j = @j + 1
END
SET @i = @i + 1
END

CREATE VIEW dbo.vJoin
AS
SELECT p.ParentId
,p.ParentDate
,c.ChildId
,C.ChildDate
FROM dbo.Parent p
JOIN dbo.Child c
ON p.ParentId = c.ParentId

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.SingleUDF ()
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
(
SELECT p.ParentId
,p.ParentDate
,c.ChildId
,C.ChildDate
FROM dbo.Parent p
JOIN dbo.Child c
ON p.ParentId = c.ParentId
)

CREATE Function dbo.MultiUDF ()
RETURNS @Multi TABLE
(ParentId int
,ParentDate datetime
,ChildId int
,ChildDate datetime)
AS
BEGIN
INSERT INTO @Multi
(ParentId
,ParentDate
,ChildId
,ChildDate)
SELECT p.ParentId
,p.ParentDate
,c.ChildId
,C.ChildDate
FROM dbo.Parent p
JOIN dbo.Child c
ON p.ParentId = c.ParentId
RETURN
END

set statistics time on
select * from vJoin
select * from SingleUDF()
select * from MultiUDF()
set statistics time off