This article is as per request from Application Development Team Leader of my company. His team encountered code where application was preparing string for ORDER BY clause of SELECT statement. Application was passing this string as variable to Stored Procedure (SP) and SP was using EXEC to execute the SQL string. This is not good for performance as Stored Procedure has to recompile every time due to EXEC. sp_executesql can do the same task but still not the best performance.
Previously:
Application:
Nesting logic to prepare variable OrderBy.
Database:
Stored Procedure takes variable OrderBy as input parameter.
SP uses EXEC (or sp_executesql) to execute dynamically build SQL.
This was taking big hit on performance. The issue was how to improve the performance as well as remove the logic of preparing OrderBy from application. The solution I came up was using multiple CASE statement. This solution is listed here in simple version using AdventureWorks sample database. Another challenge was to order by direction of ascending or descending direction. The solution of that issue is also displayed in following example. Test the example with different options for @OrderBy and @OrderByDirection.
Currently:
Database only solution:
USE AdventureWorks
GO
DECLARE @OrderBy VARCHAR(10)
DECLARE @OrderByDirection VARCHAR(1)
SET @OrderBy = 'State' ----Other options Postal for PostalCode,
---- State for StateProvinceID, City for City
SET @OrderByDirection = 'D' ----Other options A for ascending,
---- D for descending
SELECT AddressID, City, StateProvinceID, PostalCode
FROM person.address
WHERE AddressID < 100
ORDER BY
CASE WHEN @OrderBy = 'Postal'
AND @OrderByDirection = 'D'
THEN PostalCode END DESC,
CASE WHEN @OrderBy = 'Postal'
AND @OrderByDirection != 'D'
THEN PostalCode END,
CASE WHEN @OrderBy = 'State'
AND @OrderByDirection = 'D'
THEN StateProvinceID END DESC,
CASE WHEN @OrderBy = 'State'
AND @OrderByDirection != 'D'
THEN StateProvinceID END,
CASE WHEN @OrderBy = 'City'
AND @OrderByDirection = 'D'
THEN City END DESC,
CASE WHEN @OrderBy = 'City'
AND @OrderByDirection != 'D'
THEN City END
GO
Above modified query has improved performance for our stored procedure very much. Let me know if you are implementing similar logic using any other method.
Reference : Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
126 Comments. Leave new
Hi Mr.Pinal Dave,
We have table containing millions of records.
We are using paging concept to load 10 records from db and grid have sorting and filter facility also.
For sorting i have used same method as you mention in this blog with cases. And it take around 3-4 second to load records
But if i put fixed order by with direction then it will not 1 second so can you please help me to optimize my query.
Thanks
You can see how CASE expression can be effectively used in many cases
when using this sorting sql engine is utilising 93% time for sorting.i also used option(recompile).but stil taking 23 seconds to complete execurion
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY
CASE WHEN @SortExpression = ‘ColumName ASc THEN SenderPublicIP END ASC
thanks
my pleasure.
I have following problem :
write a query to list the names of the owners in alphabetical order,
when two owners have the same last name, order by first name.
Do you think the query I wrote is right??
SELECT o1.olname, o1.ofname
FROM owner o1 JOIN owner o2
GROUP BY o1.olname
ORDER BY
(CASE
WHEN o1.olname o2.olname THEN o1.olname
WHEN o1.olname = o2.olname THEN o1.ofname
END);
Why does this fail… and how can I fix it?
> CASE WHEN (myNum > 5) THEN DueOn ASC ELSE SavedOn DESC END
The DESC and ASC aren’t allowed. Why?