Fastest way to insert 1 million rows in SQL Server

Question

I am writing a stored procedure to insert rows into a table. The problem is that in some operation we might want to insert more than 1 million rows and we want to make it fast. Another thing is that in one of the column, it is Nvarchar(MAX). We might want to put avg 1000 characters in this column.

Firstly, I wrote a prc to insert row by row. Then I generate some random data for insert with the NVARCHAR(MAX) column to be a string of 1000 characters. Then use a loop to call the prc to insert the rows. The perf is very bad which takes 48 mins if I use SQL server to log on the database server to insert. If I use C# to connect to the server in my desktop (that is what we usually want to do ), it takes about more than 90mins.

Then, I changed the prc to take a table type parameter as the input. I prepared the rows somehow and put them in the table type parameter and do the insert by the following command:

INSERT INTO tableA SELECT * from @tableTypeParameterB

I tried batch size as 1000 rows and 3000 rows (Put 1000-3000 rows in the @tableTypeParameterB to be inserted for one time). The performance is still bad. It takes about 3 mins to insert 1 million rows if I run it in the SQL server and take about 10 mins if I use C# program to connect from my desktop.

The tableA has a clustered index with 2 columns.

My target is to make the insert as fast as possible (My idea target is within 1 min). Is there any way to optimize it?

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Just an update:

I tried the Bulk Copy Insert which was suggested by some people below. I tried use the SQLBULKCOPY to insert 1000 row and 10000 row at a time. The performance is still 10 mins to insert 1 million row (Every row has a column with 1000 characters). There is no performance improve. Is there any other suggestions?

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An update based on the comments require.

The data is actually coming from UI. The user will change use UI to bulk select, we say, one million rows and change one column from the old value to new value. This operation will be done in a separate procedure.But here what we need to do is that make the mid-tier service to get the old value and new value from the UI and insert them in the table. The old value and new value may be up to 4000 characters and the average is 1000 characters. I think the long string old/new value slow down the speed because when I change the test data old value/new value to 20-50 characters and insert is very fast no matter use SQLBulkCopy or table type variable

Answer 1

I think what you are looking for is Bulk Insert if you prefer using SQL.

Or there is also the ADO.NET for Batch Operations option, so you keep the logic in your C# application. This article is also very complete.

Update

Yes I'm afraid bulk insert will only work with imported files (from within the database).

I have an experience in a Java project where we needed to insert millions of rows (data came from outside the application btw).

Database was Oracle, so of course we used the multi-line insert of Oracle. It turned out that the Java batch update was much faster than the multi-valued insert of Oracle (so called "bulk updates").

My suggestion is:

• Compare the performance between the multi-value insert of SQL Server code (then you can read from inside your database, a procedure if you like) with the ADO.NET Batch Insert.

If the data you are going to manipulate is coming from outside your application (if it is not already in the database), I would say just go for the ADO.NET Batch Inserts. I think that its your case.

Note: Keep in mind that batch inserts usually operate with the same query. That is what makes them so fast.

Answer 2

Calling a prc in a loop incurs many round trips to SQL.

Not sure what batching approach you used but you should look into table value parameters: Docs are here. You'll want to still batch write.

You'll also want to consider memory on your server. Batching (say 10K at a time) might be a bit slower but might keep memory pressure lower on your server since you're buffering and processing a set at a time.

Table-valued parameters provide an easy way to marshal multiple rows of data from a client application to SQL Server without requiring multiple round trips or special server-side logic for processing the data. You can use table-valued parameters to encapsulate rows of data in a client application and send the data to the server in a single parameterized command. The incoming data rows are stored in a table variable that can then be operated on by using Transact-SQL.

Another option is bulk insert. TVPs benefit from re-use however so it depends on your usage pattern. The first link has a note about comparing:

Using table-valued parameters is comparable to other ways of using set-based variables; however, using table-valued parameters frequently can be faster for large data sets. Compared to bulk operations that have a greater startup cost than table-valued parameters, table-valued parameters perform well for inserting less than 1000 rows.

Table-valued parameters that are reused benefit from temporary table caching. This table caching enables better scalability than equivalent BULK INSERT operations.

Another comparison here: Performance of bcp/BULK INSERT vs. Table-Valued Parameters

Answer 3

Here is an example what I've used before with SqlBulkCopy. Grant it I was only dealing with around 10,000 records but it did it inserted them a few seconds after the query ran. My field names were the same so it was pretty easy. You might have to modify the DataTable field names. Hope this helps.

private void UpdateMemberRecords(Int32 memberId)
    {

    string sql = string.Format("select * from Member where mem_id > {0}", memberId);
    try {
        DataTable dt = new DataTable();
        using (SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(new SqlCommand(sql, _sourceDb))) {
            da.Fill(dt);
        }

        Console.WriteLine("Member Count: {0}", dt.Rows.Count);

        using (SqlBulkCopy sqlBulk = new SqlBulkCopy(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("DestDb"), SqlBulkCopyOptions.KeepIdentity)) {
            sqlBulk.BulkCopyTimeout = 600;
            sqlBulk.DestinationTableName = "Member";
            sqlBulk.WriteToServer(dt);
        }
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        throw;
    }
}

Answer 4

If you have SQL2014, then the speed of In-Memory OLTP is amazing; http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/dn133186.aspx

Answer 5

Depending on your end goal, it may be a good idea to look into Entity Framework (or similar). This abstracts out the SQL so that you don't really have to worry about it in your client application, which is how things should be.

Eventually, you could end up with something like this:

using (DatabaseContext db = new DatabaseContext())
{
    for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
    {
        db.Table.Add(new Row(){ /* column data goes here */});
    }
    db.SaveChanges();
}

The key part here (and it boils down to a lot of the other answers) is that Entity Framework handles building the actual insert statement and committing it to the database.

In the above code, nothing will actually be sent to the database until SaveChanges is called and then everything is sent.

I can't quite remember where I found it, but there is research around that suggests it is worth while to call SaveChanges every so often. From memory, I think every 1000 entries is a good choice for committing to the database. Committing every entry, compared to every 100 entries, doesn't provide much performance benefit and 10000 takes it past the limit. Don't take my word for that though, the numbers could be wrong. You seem to have a good grasp on the testing side of things though, so have a play around with things.