Tag: sql-server

Parallel rowstore scans are parallel “aware”. This makes them unlike most other operators which work independently on different threads. Columnstore indexes store data in a dramatically different way than rowstore objects, so perhaps we can expect differences in how rows are distributed among threads during a parallel scan. This blog post explores some of the observable behavior around row distribution for parallel columnstore scans.

Methods of Rowstore Scan Parallel Row Distribution

This will be an extremely brief summary of how SQL Server distributes rows among threads for rowstore parallel scans. A parallel page supplier sends pages to each thread on a demand basis. Threads may end up processing different numbers of pages for many reasons. If you like, you can read more about this here and here. In addition, there is some fancy behavior for partitioned tables. The documentation describes this behavior in SQL Server 2008 and it may have changed since then, but this is sufficient to set the stage. The important part is that SQL Server will in some cases give each relevant partition its own thread. In other cases, SQL Server will assign multiple threads to a single partition.

Methods of Columnstore Scan Parallel Row Distribution

I investigated tables with only compressed rowgroups. I did not consider delta stores because real CCIs don’t have delta stores. As far as I can tell, there are at least three different methods that SQL Server can use to assign rows to threads during a parallel CCI scan.

Rowgroup Parallelism

One method of distributing rows is to assign each thread to a relevant rowgroup. Two or more threads will not read rows from the same rowgroup. This strategy can be used if the cardinality estimate from the scan is sufficiently high compared to the DOP used by the query. Rowgroup level parallelism will be used if:

Cardinality Estimate >= MAXDOP * 1048576 * 0.5

To show this, let’s build a CCI with a single column integer that runs from 1 to 1048576 * 10. Naturally, the table will have ten compressed rowgroups of the maximum size:

CREATE TABLE dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM (
	ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	INDEX CCI CLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE
);

INSERT INTO dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM WITH (TABLOCK)
SELECT TOP (1048576 * 10) ROW_NUMBER()
	OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM master..spt_values t1
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
OPTION (MAXDOP 1);

I ran my tests with a simple query that is likely to go parallel on my machine and that doesn’t qualify for aggregate pushdown. With a cardinality estimate of exactly 1000000 and MAXDOP of 2 all of the rows are sent to one thread:

SELECT MAX(SQRT(ID))
FROM dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM
WHERE ID <= 1000000
OPTION (MAXDOP 2);

From the actual plan:

If we reduce the cardinality estimate by one row, the rows are spread out more evenly on the two threads:

SELECT MAX(SQRT(ID))
FROM dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM
WHERE ID <= 999999
OPTION (MAXDOP 2);

From the actual plan:

Note that the cardinality estimate displayed in SSMS may be misleading. The first query has a displayed cardinality estimate of 2000000 rows, but it does not use rowgroup parallelism:

SELECT MAX(SQRT(ID))
FROM dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM
WHERE ID <= 1999999 -- query plans can round
OPTION (MAXDOP 4);

From the actual plan:

But this one does:

SELECT MAX(SQRT(ID))
FROM dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM
WHERE ID <= 2000000
OPTION (MAXDOP 4);

From the actual plan:

Of course, we can get the query that takes an aggregate of 1999999 rows to use rowgroup level parallelism by bumping up the estimate:

DECLARE @filter BIGINT = 1999999;

SELECT MAX(SQRT(ID))
FROM dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM
WHERE ID <= @filter
OPTION (MAXDOP 4);

Here the estimate is:

0.3 * 10485800 = 3145740.0

So we get the expected parallelism strategy:

We can show that the rowgroup parallelism strategy is demand-based by deliberately slowing down the required the thread that grabs the first rowgroup in the table. Here I’m defining first by the ID that’s returned when running a SELECT TOP 1 ID query against the table. On my machine I get an ID of 9437185. The following code will add significant processing time in the CROSS APPLY part for only the row with an ID of 9437185. Every other row simply does a Constant Scan and goes on its merry way:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM dbo.CCI_SHOW_RG_PARALLELISM o
CROSS APPLY (
	SELECT TOP 1 1 c
	FROM
	(
		SELECT 1 c
		WHERE o.ID <> 9437185

		UNION ALL

		SELECT 1 c
		FROM master..spt_values t1
		CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
		CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
		WHERE o.ID = 9437185
		ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)
			OFFSET 100000000 ROWS
			FETCH FIRST 1 ROW ONLY
	) t
) t2
OPTION (MAXDOP 2);

Thread 1 processes nine rowgroups and waits on thread 2 to process its single rowgroup:

Split Rowgroup Parallelism

If the CCI has a small number of rows and the cardinality estimate is low enough you may see a different parallel row distribution strategy employed. I couldn’t think of a good name for this, but SQL Server splits up each rowgroup into roughly equal pieces and threads can process those pieces on a demand basis. The number of pieces seems to depend on the number of rows in the rowgroup instead of MAXDOP . For MAXDOP larger than 2 this behavior can be observed if a table has one or two rowgroups. For a MAXDOP of 2 this behavior can be observed if a table has exactly one rowgroup.

The formula for the number of pieces appears to be the number of rows in the rowgroup divided by 104857, rounded down, with a minimum of 1. The maximum rowgroup size of 1048576 implies a maximum number of pieces of 10 per rowgroup. Here’s a table to show all of the possibilities:

We can see evidence of this behavior in SQL Server with a few tests. As before I’ll need to slow down one thread. First I’ll put 943713 integers into a single compressed rowgroup:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL;

CREATE TABLE dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL (
ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
INDEX CCI CLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE
);

INSERT INTO dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL WITH (TABLOCK)
SELECT TOP (943713) ROW_NUMBER()
	OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM master..spt_values t1
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
OPTION (MAXDOP 1);

I will test with a very similar query to a previous test:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL o
CROSS APPLY (
	SELECT TOP 1 1 c
	FROM
	(
		SELECT 1 c
		WHERE o.ID <> 1

		UNION ALL

		SELECT 1 c
		FROM master..spt_values t1
		CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
		CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
		WHERE o.ID = 1
		ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)
			OFFSET 100000000 ROWS
			FETCH FIRST 1 ROW ONLY
	) t
) t2
OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8649, MAXDOP 4);

The parallel scan should be split into nine pieces to be divided among threads because the table has a single rowgroup with a row count of 943713. This is exactly what happens:

If I truncate the table and load one fewer row, the scan is now split up into eight pieces:

I can also create two compressed rowgroups of a size that should led to seven pieces per rowgroup:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL;

CREATE TABLE dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL (
	ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	INDEX CCI CLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE
);

INSERT INTO dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL WITH (TABLOCK)
SELECT TOP (733999) ROW_NUMBER()
	OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM master..spt_values t1
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
OPTION (MAXDOP 1);

INSERT INTO dbo.TEST_CCI_SMALL WITH (TABLOCK)
SELECT TOP (733999) 733999 + ROW_NUMBER()
	OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM master..spt_values t1
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
OPTION (MAXDOP 1);

Thread 1 processes the row with an ID of 734000 so it only gets one piece:

With more than one rowgroup, the demand-based aspect of piece distribution doesn’t quite work in the same way as with a single rowgroup. I wasn’t able to work out all of the details.

A Third Way?

What about queries that do not meet either of the two above criteria? For example, a query against a not small CCI that has a low cardinality estimate coming out of the scan? In some cases SQL Server will use rowgroup level distribution. In other cases it appears to use a combination of the two methods described above. Most of the time the behavior can be described as each thread gets assigned an entire rowgroup and threads race for pieces of the remaining rowgroups. I wasn’t able to figure out exactly how SQL Server decides which method to use, despite running many tests. However, I will show most of the behavior that I observed. First put 7 rowgroups into a CCI:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.MYSTERIOUS_CCI;

CREATE TABLE dbo.MYSTERIOUS_CCI (
	ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	INDEX CCI CLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE
);

INSERT INTO dbo.MYSTERIOUS_CCI WITH (TABLOCK)
SELECT TOP (1048576 * 7) ROW_NUMBER()
	OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL))
FROM master..spt_values t1
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
OPTION (MAXDOP 1);

SELECT TOP 1 ID -- 6291457
FROM dbo.MYSTERIOUS_CCI;

I added local variables to my test query to lower the cardinality estimate. Otherwise I would get rowgroup distribution every time. Here’s an example query:

declare @lower_id INT = 1048576 * 2 + 1;
declare @upper_id INT = 1048576 * 7;

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM dbo.MYSTERIOUS_CCI o
CROSS APPLY (
	SELECT TOP 1 1 c
	FROM
	(
		SELECT 1 c
		WHERE o.ID <> 6291457

		UNION ALL

		SELECT 1 c
		FROM master..spt_values t1
		CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t2
		CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t3
		WHERE o.ID = 6291457
		ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)
			OFFSET 100000000 ROWS
			FETCH FIRST 1 ROW ONLY
	) t
) t2
WHERE o.ID BETWEEN @lower_id AND @upper_id
OPTION (QUERYTRACEON 8649, MAXDOP 3);

With a MAXDOP of 3 and five processed rowgroups I get rowgroup level parallelism:

With a MAXDOP of 4 and five processed rowgroups, each thread gets a rowgroup and the other three threads race to process the remaining 20 pieces:

With a MAXDOP of 3 and six processed rowgroups we no longer get rowgroup level parallelism:

What about Partitioning?

In tests not reproduced here, I was not able to observe any differences in how rows were distributed for parallel CCI scans when the underlying CCI was partitioned. This seems reasonable if we think about how partitioning for CCIs is different than for rowstore tables. CCI partitions are simply a collection of rowgroups containing rows relevant to the partition. If there’s a need to split up the underlying components of a table we can just assign rowgroups to different threads. For rowstore tables, we can think of each partition as a mini-table. Partitioning for rowstore adds underlying objects which can be distributed to parallel threads.

Fun with Query Plans

With a partial understanding of how SQL server distributes rows after a parallel scan, we can write queries that show some of the edge cases that can lead to poor performance. The following query is complete nonsense but it shows the point well enough. Here I’m cross joining to a few numbers from the spt_values table. The CROSS JOIN is meant to represent other downstream work done by a query:

SELECT MAX(SQRT(o.ID + t.number))
FROM dbo.MYSTERIOUS_CCI o
CROSS JOIN master..spt_values t
WHERE o.ID <= 1100000 AND
t.number BETWEEN 0 AND 4
OPTION (MAXDOP 2, NO_PERFORMANCE_SPOOL, QUERYTRACEON 8649);

The cardinality estimate and MAXDOP of 2 leads to rowgroup level parallelism being used. Unfortunately, this is very unbalanced:

And as a result, the query barely benefits from parallelism:

CPU time = 25578 ms, elapsed time = 24580 ms.

It’s a well-guarded secret that queries run faster with odd MAXDOP , so let’s try a MAXDOP of 3. Now my parallel threads no longer sleep on the job:

CPU time = 30922 ms, elapsed time = 11840 ms.

Here’s the row distribution from the scan:

Final Thoughts

This post explored a bit of the observable behavior for how rows are distributed to threads after a parallel columnstore index scan. The algorithms used can in some cases lead to row imbalance on threads which can cause performance issues downstream in the plan. The lack of repartition stream operators in batch mode can make this problem worse than it might be for rowstore scans, but I still expect issues caused by it to be relatively uncommon in practice. Thanks for reading!

String aggregation is a not uncommon problem in SQL Server. By string aggregation I mean grouping related rows together and concatenating a string column for that group in a certain order into a single column. How will do CCIs do with this type of query?

The Data Set

A simple table with three columns is sufficient for testing. ITEM_ID is the id for the rows that should be aggregated together. LINE_ID stores the concatenation order within the group. COMMENT is the string column to be concatenated. The table will have 104857600 rows total with 16 rows per ITEM_ID.

CREATE TABLE dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG (
	ITEM_ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	LINE_ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	COMMENT VARCHAR(10) NULL,
	INDEX CCI CLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE
);

DECLARE @loop INT = 0
SET NOCOUNT ON;
WHILE @loop < 100
BEGIN
	INSERT INTO dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG WITH (TABLOCK)
	SELECT
	t.RN / 16
	, 1 + t.RN % 16
	, CHAR(65 + t.RN % 16)
	FROM
	(
		SELECT TOP (1048576)
		(1048576 * @loop) - 1 +
		ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) RN
		FROM master..spt_values t1
		CROSS JOIN  master..spt_values t2
	) t
	OPTION (MAXDOP 1);

	SET @loop = @loop + 1;
END;

On my machine this codes takes around a minute and a half and the final table size is around 225 MB. I’m inserting batches of 1048576 rows with MAXDOP 1 to get nice, clean rowgroups.

The Test Query

Let’s concatenate the strings at an ITEM_ID level for all ITEM_IDs with an id between 3276800 and 3342335. All of the data is stored in a single rowgroup and the CCI was built in such a way that all other rowgroups can be skipped with that filter. This should represent the best case for CCI performance. A common way to concatenate a column is with the FOR XML PATH method:

SELECT
  o.ITEM_ID
, STUFF(
	(
		SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
		FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG i
		WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
		ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
		FOR XML PATH('')
	)
,1 ,1, '') ALL_COMMENTS
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG o
WHERE o.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
GROUP BY o.ITEM_ID;

Note that I’m not bothering with the additional arguments for the XML part, but you should whenever using this method in production.

The query plan looks reasonable at first glance:

However, the query takes nearly six minutes to complete. That’s not the lightning fast CCI query performance that we were promised!

Spool Problems

We can see from the actual execution plan that SQL Server scanned all 104.8 million rows from the CCI on a single thread:

Those rows were then sent into an index spool which was read from all four threads in the nested loop. The CCI scan and the build of the index spool took the most time in the plan so it makes sense why CPU time is less than elapsed time, even with a MAXDOP 4 query:

CPU time = 305126 ms, elapsed time = 359176 ms.

Thinking back to how parallel nested loop joins work, it seems unavoidable that the index spool was built with just one thread. The rows from the outer result set are sent to the inner query one row at a time on different threads. All of the threads run independently at MAXDOP 1. The eager spool for the index is a blocking operation and the blocking occurs even when the subquery isn’t needed. Consider the following query in which the ITEM_ID = 3400000 filter means that rows from the FOR XML PATH part of the APPLY will never be needed:

SELECT o.ITEM_ID
, ac.ALL_COMMENTS
FROM
(
	SELECT TOP (9223372036854775807) b.ITEM_ID
	FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG b
	WHERE b.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
	GROUP BY b.ITEM_ID
) o
OUTER APPLY (
	SELECT 'TEST'

	UNION ALL

	SELECT STUFF(
		(
			SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
			FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG i
			WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
			ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
			FOR XML PATH('')
		)
	,1 ,1, '')
	WHERE o.ITEM_ID =  3400000
)  ac (ALL_COMMENTS)
OPTION (MAXDOP 4, QUERYTRACEON 8649);

The index spool is still built for this query on one thread even though the startup expression predicate condition is never met. It seems unlikely that we’ll be able to do anything about the fact that the index spool is built with one thread and that it blocks execution for the query. However, we know that we only need 1048576 rows from the CCI to return the query’s results. Right now the query takes 104.8 million rows and throws them into the spool. Can we reduce the number of rows put into the spool? The most obvious approach is to simply copy the filter on ITEM_ID into the subquery:

SELECT
  o.ITEM_ID
, STUFF(
	(
		SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
		FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG i
		WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
		and i.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
		ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
		FOR XML PATH('')
	)
,1 ,1, '') ALL_COMMENTS
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG o
WHERE o.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
GROUP BY o.ITEM_ID;

This doesn’t have the desired effect:

The filter is moved after the index build. We’ll still get all of the rows from the table put into the spool, but no rows will come out unless ITEM_ID is between 3276800 and 3342335. This is not helpful. We can get more strict with the query optimizer by adding a superfluous TOP to the subquery. That should force SQL Server to filter on ITEM_ID before sending rows to the spool because otherwise the TOP restriction may not be respected. One implementation:

SELECT
o.ITEM_ID
, STUFF(
(
SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
FROM
(
SELECT TOP (9223372036854775807)
a.ITEM_ID, a.LINE_ID, a.COMMENT
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG a
WHERE a.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
) i
WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
FOR XML PATH('')
)
,1 ,1, '') ALL_COMMENTS
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG o
WHERE o.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
GROUP BY o.ITEM_ID;

SQL Server continues to outsmart us:

As you can see in the plan above, the spool has completely disappeared. I was not able to find a way, even with undocumented black magic, to reduce the number of rows going into the spool. Perhaps it is a fundamental restriction regarding index spools. In fact, we can use the undocumented trace flag 8615 to see that spools are not even considered at any part in the query plan for the new query. On the left is the previous query with the spool with an example highlighted. On the right is the new query. The text shown here is just for illustration purposes, but we can see the spool on the left:

The important point is that for this query we appear to be stuck.

Rowgroup Elimination Problems

We can try our luck without the spool by relying on rowgroup elimation alone. The spool can’t be eliminated with the NO_PERFORMANCE_SPOOL hint, but another option (other than the TOP trick above) is to use the undocumented QUERYRULEOFF syntax to disable the optimizer rule for building spools:

SELECT
  o.ITEM_ID
, STUFF(
	(
		SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
		FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG i
		WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
		ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
		FOR XML PATH('')
	)
,1 ,1, '') ALL_COMMENTS
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG o
WHERE o.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
GROUP BY o.ITEM_ID
OPTION (QUERYRULEOFF BuildSpool);

The spool is gone but we don’t get rowgroup elimination:

We can get rowgroup elimination even without hardcoded filters with a bitmap from a hash join. Why don’t we get it with a nested loop join? Surely SQL Server ought to be able to apply rowgroup elimination for each outer row as it’s processed by the inner part of the nested loop join. We can explore this question further with tests that don’t do string aggregation. The query below gets rowgroup elimination but the constant filters are passed down to the CCI predicate:

SELECT *
FROM (VALUES (1), (2), (3), (4)) AS v(x)
INNER JOIN dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG a ON v.x = a.ITEM_ID
OPTION (FORCE ORDER, LOOP JOIN);

If we throw the four values into a temp table:

SELECT x INTO #t
FROM (VALUES (1), (2), (3), (4)) AS v(x)

The join predicate is applied in the nested loop operator. We don’t get any rowgroup elimination. Perhaps TOP can help us:

SELECT *
FROM #t v
CROSS APPLY (
	SELECT TOP (9223372036854775807) *
	FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG a
	WHERE v.x = a.ITEM_ID
) a
OPTION (LOOP JOIN);

Sadly not:

The join predicate is applied in the filter operation. We still don’t get any rowgroup elimination. Frustratingly, we get the behavior that we’re after if we replace the CCI with a heap:

I don’t really see an advantage in pushing down the predicate with a heap. Perhaps Microsoft did not program the optimization that we’re looking for into the query optimizer. After all, this is likely to be a relatively uncommon case. This query is simple enough in that we filter directly against the CCI. In theory, we can give our query a fighting chance by adding a redundant filter on ITEM_ID to the subquery. Here’s the query that I’ll run:

SELECT
  o.ITEM_ID
, STUFF(
	(
		SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
		FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG i
		WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
		and i.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
		ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
		FOR XML PATH('')
	)
,1 ,1, '') ALL_COMMENTS
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG o
WHERE o.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
GROUP BY o.ITEM_ID
OPTION (QUERYRULEOFF BuildSpool);

Unfortunately performance is even worse than before. The query finished in around 51 minutes on my machine. It was a proper parallel query and we skipped quite a few rowgroups:

Table ‘CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG’. Segment reads 65537, segment skipped 6488163.
CPU time = 10028282 ms, elapsed time = 3083875 ms.

Skipping trillions of rows is impressive but we still read over 68 billion rows from the CCI. That’s not going to be fast. We can’t improve performance further with this method since there aren’t any nonclustered indexes on the CCI, so there’s nothing better to seek against in the inner part of the loop.

Temp Tables

We can use the humble temp table to avoid some of the problems with the index spool. We’re able to insert into it in parallel, build the index in parallel, and we can limit the temp table to only the 1048576 rows that are needed for the query. The following code finishes in less than two seconds on my machine:

CREATE TABLE #CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG_SPOOL (
	ITEM_ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	LINE_ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
	COMMENT VARCHAR(10) NULL
);

INSERT INTO #CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG_SPOOL WITH (TABLOCK)
SELECT a.ITEM_ID, a.LINE_ID, a.COMMENT
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG a
WHERE a.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335;

CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX CI_CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG_SPOOL
ON #CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG_SPOOL (ITEM_ID, LINE_ID);

SELECT
  o.ITEM_ID
, STUFF(
	(
		SELECT ','+ i.COMMENT
		FROM #CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG_SPOOL i
		WHERE o.ITEM_ID = i.ITEM_ID
		ORDER BY i.LINE_ID
		FOR XML PATH('')
	)
,1 ,1, '') ALL_COMMENTS
FROM dbo.CCI_FOR_STRING_AGG o
WHERE o.ITEM_ID BETWEEN 3276800 AND 3342335
GROUP BY o.ITEM_ID;

The query plan for the last query:

With this approach we’re not really getting much from defining the underlying table as a CCI. If the table had more columns that weren’t needed then we could skip those columns with column elimination.

Other Solutions

An obvious solution is simply to add a covering nonclustered index to the table. Of course, that comes with the admission that columnstore currently doesn’t have anything to offer with this type of query. Other solutions which are likely to be more columnstore friendly include using a CLR function to do the aggregation and the SQL Server 2017 STRING_AGG function.

Note that recursion is not likely to be a good solution here. Every recursive query that I’ve seen involves nested loops. The dreaded index spool returns:

Final Thoughts

Note that the poor performance of these queries isn’t a problem specific to columnstore. Rowstore tables can have the similar performance issues with string aggregation if there isn’t a sufficient covering index. However, if CCIs are used as a replacement for all nonclustered indexes, then the performance of queries that require the table to be on the inner side of a nested loop join may significantly degrade. Some of the optimizations that make querying CCIs fast appear to be difficult to realize for these types of queries. The same string aggregation query when run against a table with a rowstore clustered index on ITEM_ID and LINE_ID finished in 1 second. That is an almost 360X improvement over the CCI. Thanks for reading!