SP taking 15 minutes, but the same query when executed returns results in 1-2 minutes

Question

So basically I have this relatively long stored procedure. The basic execution flow is that it SELECTS INTO some data into temp tables declared with he # sign and then runs a cursor through these tables a generate a 'running total' into a third temp table which is created using CREATE. Then this resulting temp table is joined with other tables in the DB to generated the result after some grouping etc. The problem is that this SP had been running fine until now returning results in 1-2 minutes. And now suddenly its taking 12-15 minutes. If I extract the query from the SP and executed it in the management studio by manually setting the same parameters it returns results in 1-2 minutes but the SP takes very long. Any idea what could be happening. I tried to generate the Actual Execution plans of both the Query and the SP but it couldn't generate it because of the cursor. Any idea why the SP takes so long while the query doesn't?

Solution 1

This is the footprint of parameter-sniffing. See here for another discussion about it; SQL poor stored procedure execution plan performance - parameter sniffing

There are several possible fixes, including adding WITH RECOMPILE to your stored procedure which works about half the time.

The recommended fix for most situations (though it depends on the structure of your query and sproc) is to NOT use your parameters directly in your queries, but rather store them into local variables and then use those variables in your queries.

Solution 2

its due to parameter sniffing. first of all declare temporary variable and set the incoming variable value to temp variable and use temp variable in whole application here is an example below.

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[Sp_GetAllCustomerRecords]
@customerId INT 
AS
declare @customerIdTemp INT
set @customerIdTemp = @customerId
BEGIN
SELECT * 
FROM   Customers e Where
CustomerId = @customerIdTemp 
End

try this approach

Solution 3

Try recompiling the sproc to ditch any stored query plan

exec sp_recompile 'YourSproc'

Then run your sproc taking care to use sensible paramters.

Also compare the actual execution plans between the two methods of executing the query.

It might also be worth recomputing any statistics.

Solution 4

I'd also look into parameter sniffing. Could be the proc needs to handle the parameters slighlty differently.

Solution 5

I usually start troubleshooting issues like that by using "print getdate() + ' - step '". This helps me narrow down what's taking the most time. You can compare from where you run it from query analyzer and narrow down where the problem is at.

View more solutions