EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE

Evaluates projections for potential DELETE and UPDATE performance issues.

Evaluates projections for potential DELETE and UPDATE performance issues. If Vertica finds any issues, it issues a warning message. When evaluating multiple projections, EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE returns up to ten projections with issues, and the name of a table that lists all issues that it found.

For information on resolving delete and update performance issues, see Optimizing DELETE and UPDATE.

This is a meta-function. You must call meta-functions in a top-level SELECT statement.

Behavior type

Volatile

Syntax

EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE ( ['[[database.]schema.]scope'] )

Parameters

[database.]schema

Database and schema. The default schema is public. If you specify a database, it must be the current database.

scope
Specifies the projections to evaluate, one of the following:
  • [table.]projection
    Evaluate projection. For example:

    SELECT EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE('store.store_orders_fact.store_orders_fact_b1');
    
  • *table*
    Specifies to evaluate all projections of table. For example:

    SELECT EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE('store.store_orders_fact');
    

If you supply no arguments, EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE evaluates all projections that you can access. Depending on the size of your database, this can incur considerable overhead.

Privileges

Non-superuser: SELECT privilege on the anchor table

Examples

EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE evaluates all projections of table example for potential DELETE and UPDATE performance issues.

=> create table example (A int, B int,C int);
CREATE TABLE
=> create projection one_sort (A,B,C) as (select A,B,C from example) order by A;
CREATE PROJECTION
=> create projection two_sort (A,B,C) as (select A,B,C from example) order by A,B;
CREATE PROJECTION
=> select evaluate_delete_performance('example');
            evaluate_delete_performance
---------------------------------------------------
 No projection delete performance concerns found.
(1 row)

The previous example show that the two projections one_sort and two_sort have no inherent structural issues that might cause poor DELETE performance. However, the data contained within the projection can create potential delete issues if the sorted columns do not uniquely identify a row or small number of rows.

In the following example, Perl is used to populate the table with data using a nested series of loops:

  • The inner loop populates column C.

  • The middle loop populates column B.

  • The outer loop populates column A.

The result is column A contains only three distinct values (0, 1, and 2), while column B slowly varies between 20 and 0 and column C changes in each row:

=> \! perl -e 'for ($i=0; $i<3; $i++) { for ($j=0; $j<21; $j++) { for ($k=0; $k<19; $k++) { printf "%d,%d,%d\n", $i,$j,$k;}}}' | /opt/vertica/bin/vsql -c "copy example from stdin delimiter ',' direct;"
Password:
=> select * from example;
 A | B  | C
---+----+----
 0 | 20 | 18
 0 | 20 | 17
 0 | 20 | 16
 0 | 20 | 15
 0 | 20 | 14
 0 | 20 | 13
 0 | 20 | 12
 0 | 20 | 11
 0 | 20 | 10
 0 | 20 |  9
 0 | 20 |  8
 0 | 20 |  7
 0 | 20 |  6
 0 | 20 |  5
 0 | 20 |  4
 0 | 20 |  3
 0 | 20 |  2
 0 | 20 |  1
 0 | 20 |  0
 0 | 19 | 18
 ...
 2 |  1 |  0
 2 |  0 | 18
 2 |  0 | 17
 2 |  0 | 16
 2 |  0 | 15
 2 |  0 | 14
 2 |  0 | 13
 2 |  0 | 12
 2 |  0 | 11
 2 |  0 | 10
 2 |  0 |  9
 2 |  0 |  8
 2 |  0 |  7
 2 |  0 |  6
 2 |  0 |  5
 2 |  0 |  4
 2 |  0 |  3
 2 |  0 |  2
 2 |  0 |  1
 2 |  0 |  0
=> SELECT COUNT (*) FROM example;
 COUNT
-------
  1197
(1 row)
=> SELECT COUNT (DISTINCT A) FROM example;
 COUNT
-------
     3
(1 row)

EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE is run against the projections again to determine whether the data within the projections causes any potential DELETE performance issues. Projection one_sort has potential delete issues as it only sorts on column A which has few distinct values. Each value in the sort column corresponds to many rows in the projection, which can adversely impact DELETE performance. In contrast, projection two_sort is sorted on columns A and B, where each combination of values in the two sort columns identifies just a few rows, so deletes can be performed faster:


=> select evaluate_delete_performance('example');
            evaluate_delete_performance
---------------------------------------------------
 The following projections exhibit delete performance concerns:
        "public"."one_sort_b1"
        "public"."one_sort_b0"
See v_catalog.projection_delete_concerns for more details.

=> \x
Expanded display is on.
dbadmin=> select * from projection_delete_concerns;
-[ RECORD 1 ]------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
projection_id      | 45035996273878562
projection_schema  | public
projection_name    | one_sort_b1
creation_time      | 2019-06-17 13:59:03.777085-04
last_modified_time | 2019-06-17 14:00:27.702223-04
comment            | The squared number of rows matching each sort key is about 159201 on average.
-[ RECORD 2 ]------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
projection_id      | 45035996273878548
projection_schema  | public
projection_name    | one_sort_b0
creation_time      | 2019-06-17 13:59:03.777279-04
last_modified_time | 2019-06-17 13:59:03.777279-04
comment            | The squared number of rows matching each sort key is about 159201 on average.

If you omit supplying an argument to EVALUATE_DELETE_PERFORMANCE, it evaluates all projections that you can access:

=> select evaluate_delete_performance();
                          evaluate_delete_performance
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 The following projections exhibit delete performance concerns:
        "public"."one_sort_b0"
        "public"."one_sort_b1"
See v_catalog.projection_delete_concerns for more details.
(1 row)