Performance of bcp/BULK INSERT vs. Table-Valued Parameters

Question

I'm about to have to rewrite some rather old code using SQL Server's BULK INSERT command because the schema has changed, and it occurred to me that maybe I should think about switching to a stored procedure with a TVP instead, but I'm wondering what effect it might have on performance.

Some background information that might help explain why I'm asking this question:

• The data actually comes in via a web service. The web service writes a text file to a shared folder on the database server which in turn performs a BULK INSERT. This process was originally implemented on SQL Server 2000, and at the time there was really no alternative other than chucking a few hundred INSERT statements at the server, which actually was the original process and was a performance disaster.

• The data is bulk inserted into a permanent staging table and then merged into a much larger table (after which it is deleted from the staging table).

• The amount of data to insert is "large", but not "huge" - usually a few hundred rows, maybe 5-10k rows tops in rare instances. Therefore my gut feeling is that BULK INSERT being a non-logged operation won't make that big a difference (but of course I'm not sure, hence the question).

• The insertion is actually part of a much larger pipelined batch process and needs to happen many times in succession; therefore performance is critical.

The reasons I would like to replace the BULK INSERT with a TVP are:

• Writing the text file over NetBIOS is probably already costing some time, and it's pretty gruesome from an architectural perspective.

• I believe that the staging table can (and should) be eliminated. The main reason it's there is that the inserted data needs to be used for a couple of other updates at the same time of insertion, and it's far costlier to attempt the update from the massive production table than it is to use an almost-empty staging table. With a TVP, the parameter basically is the staging table, I can do anything I want with it before/after the main insert.

• I could pretty much do away with dupe-checking, cleanup code, and all of the overhead associated with bulk inserts.

• No need to worry about lock contention on the staging table or tempdb if the server gets a few of these transactions at once (we try to avoid it, but it happens).

I'm obviously going to profile this before putting anything into production, but I thought it might be a good idea to ask around first before I spend all that time, see if anybody has any stern warnings to issue about using TVPs for this purpose.

So - for anyone who's cozy enough with SQL Server 2008 to have tried or at least investigated this, what's the verdict? For inserts of, let's say, a few hundred to a few thousand rows, happening on a fairly frequent basis, do TVPs cut the mustard? Is there a significant difference in performance compared to bulk inserts?

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Update: Now with 92% fewer question marks!

(AKA: Test Results)

The end result is now in production after what feels like a 36-stage deployment process. Both solutions were extensively tested:

• Ripping out the shared-folder code and using the SqlBulkCopy class directly;
• Switching to a Stored Procedure with TVPs.

Just so readers can get an idea of what exactly was tested, to allay any doubts as to the reliability of this data, here is a more detailed explanation of what this import process actually does:

1. Start with a temporal data sequence that is ordinarily about 20-50 data points (although it can sometimes be up a few hundred);

2. Do a whole bunch of crazy processing on it that's mostly independent of the database. This process is parallelized, so about 8-10 of the sequences in (1) are being processed at the same time. Each parallel process generates 3 additional sequences.

3. Take all 3 sequences and the original sequence and combine them into a batch.

4. Combine the batches from all 8-10 now-finished processing tasks into one big super-batch.

5. Import it using either the BULK INSERT strategy (see next step), or TVP strategy (skip to step 8).

6. Use the SqlBulkCopy class to dump the entire super-batch into 4 permanent staging tables.

7. Run a Stored Procedure that (a) performs a bunch of aggregation steps on 2 of the tables, including several JOIN conditions, and then (b) performs a MERGE on 6 production tables using both the aggregated and non-aggregated data. (Finished)

   OR

8. Generate 4 DataTable objects containing the data to be merged; 3 of them contain CLR types which unfortunately aren't properly supported by ADO.NET TVPs, so they have to be shoved in as string representations, which hurts performance a bit.

9. Feed the TVPs to a Stored Procedure, which does essentially the same processing as (7), but directly with the received tables. (Finished)

The results were reasonably close, but the TVP approach ultimately performed better on average, even when the data exceeded 1000 rows by a small amount.

Note that this import process is run many thousands of times in succession, so it was very easy to get an average time simply by counting how many hours (yes, hours) it took to finish all of the merges.

Originally, an average merge took almost exactly 8 seconds to complete (under normal load). Removing the NetBIOS kludge and switching to SqlBulkCopy reduced the time to almost exactly 7 seconds. Switching to TVPs further reduced the time to 5.2 seconds per batch. That's a 35% improvement in throughput for a process whose running time is measured in hours - so not bad at all. It's also a ~25% improvement over SqlBulkCopy.

I am actually fairly confident that the true improvement was significantly more than this. During testing it became apparent that the final merge was no longer the critical path; instead, the Web Service that was doing all of the data processing was starting to buckle under the number of requests coming in. Neither the CPU nor the database I/O were really maxed out, and there was no significant locking activity. In some cases we were seeing a gap of a few idle seconds between successive merges. There was a slight gap, but much smaller (half a second or so) when using SqlBulkCopy. But I suppose that will become a tale for another day.

Conclusion: Table-Valued Parameters really do perform better than BULK INSERT operations for complex import+transform processes operating on mid-sized data sets.

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I'd like to add one other point, just to assuage any apprehension on part of the folks who are pro-staging-tables. In a way, this entire service is one giant staging process. Every step of the process is heavily audited, so we don't need a staging table to determine why some particular merge failed (although in practice it almost never happens). All we have to do is set a debug flag in the service and it will break to the debugger or dump its data to a file instead of the database.

In other words, we already have more than enough insight into the process and don't need the safety of a staging table; the only reason we had the staging table in the first place was to avoid thrashing on all of the INSERT and UPDATE statements that we would have had to use otherwise. In the original process, the staging data only lived in the staging table for fractions of a second anyway, so it added no value in maintenance/maintainability terms.

Also note that we have not replaced every single BULK INSERT operation with TVPs. Several operations that deal with larger amounts of data and/or don't need to do anything special with the data other than throw it at the DB still use SqlBulkCopy. I am not suggesting that TVPs are a performance panacea, only that they succeeded over SqlBulkCopy in this specific instance involving several transforms between the initial staging and the final merge.

So there you have it. Point goes to TToni for finding the most relevant link, but I appreciate the other responses as well. Thanks again!

Answer 1

I think I'd still stick with a bulk insert approach. You may find that tempdb still gets hit using a TVP with a reasonable number of rows. This is my gut feeling, I can't say I've tested the performance of using TVP (I am interested in hearing others input too though)

You don't mention if you use .NET, but the approach that I've taken to optimise previous solutions was to do a bulk load of data using the SqlBulkCopy class - you don't need to write the data to a file first before loading, just give the SqlBulkCopy class (e.g.) a DataTable - that's the fastest way to insert data into the DB. 5-10K rows isn't much, I've used this for up to 750K rows. I suspect that in general, with a few hundred rows it wouldn't make a vast difference using a TVP. But scaling up would be limited IMHO.

Perhaps the new MERGE functionality in SQL 2008 would benefit you?

Also, if your existing staging table is a single table that is used for each instance of this process and you're worried about contention etc, have you considered creating a new "temporary" but physical staging table each time, then dropping it when it's finished with?

Note you can optimize the loading into this staging table, by populating it without any indexes. Then once populated, add any required indexes on at that point (FILLFACTOR=100 for optimal read performance, as at this point it will not be updated).

Answer 2

I don't really have experience with TVP yet, however there is an nice performance comparison chart vs. BULK INSERT in MSDN here.

They say that BULK INSERT has higher startup cost, but is faster thereafter. In a remote client scenario they draw the line at around 1000 rows (for "simple" server logic). Judging from their description I would say you should be fine with using TVP's. The performance hit - if any - is probably negligible and the architectural benefits seem very good.

Edit: On a side note you can avoid the server-local file and still use bulk copy by using the SqlBulkCopy object. Just populate a DataTable, and feed it into the "WriteToServer"-Method of an SqlBulkCopy instance. Easy to use, and very fast.

Answer 3

Staging tables are good! Really I wouldn't want to do it any other way. Why? Because data imports can change unexpectedly (And often in ways you can't foresee, like the time the columns were still called first name and last name but had the first name data in the last name column, for instance, to pick an example not at random.) Easy to research the problem with a staging table so you can see exactly what data was in the columns the import handled. Harder to find I think when you use an in memory table. I know a lot of people who do imports for a living as I do and all of them recommend using staging tables. I suspect there is a reason for this.

Further fixing a small schema change to a working process is easier and less time consuming than redesigning the process. If it is working and no one is willing to pay for hours to change it, then only fix what needs to be fixed due to the schema change. By changing the whole process, you introduce far more potential new bugs than by making a small change to an existing, tested working process.

And just how are you going to do away with all the data cleanup tasks? You may be doing them differently, but they still need to be done. Again, changing the process the way you describe is very risky.

Personally it sounds to me like you are just offended by using older techniques rather than getting the chance to play with new toys. You seem to have no real basis for wanting to change other than bulk insert is so 2000.