Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Working with SQL Server TempDB objects


Try to avoid them in the first place by using derived tables or CTEs

Table variables are easy an convenient, because you don't have to clean them up.
But only use them with small sets (smaller 1000 rows)

Do not use SELECT col1 INTO #temptable FROM dbo.table1

But do use a create table statement and a INSERT/SELECT:
CREATE #temptable (col1 int,col2 int)

INSERT INTO #temptable (col1,col2) SELECT Col1, Col2 FROM dbo.table1

a bit more work, but less blocking in environments with a higher load.

With larger sets you could consider using indexes and check with the query plan and statistics io to see if there are any benefits in using them.
Create these indexes after the table is filled with a set:

INSERT INTO #temptable (col1,col2) SELECT Col1,Col2 FROM dbo.table1
CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX CIX_#temptable ON #temptable (col1)

CREATE INDEX IX_#temptable_1 ON #temptable (Col2)

Create ony the indexes you absolutely need.

Configure TempDB as suggested in my post configure TempDB

Can your TempDB database disks handle the current load? See my post on fn_virtualfilestats

Prefer locally (#temptable) over globaly (##temptable) scoped definitions

Store results of linked servers in TempDB objects instead of accessing the remote datasource multiple times. See my post on linked servers

Be a good citizen, at the end of your stored procedure or T-SQL code always cleanup after your self and drop all temporarily objects you have created.


    --drop temp tables if they exists
    IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#temptable') IS NOT NULL
        DROP TABLE #temptable
 



Bookmark and Share