Using Extended Events to Capture Implicit Conversions

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017, T-SQL
Using the appropriate data type to avoid conversions or implicit conversions is a fundamental approach to good T-SQL coding practices. Implicit conversions can lead to poor performance. However, other than looking at every execution plan in your system, is there a way to see if you are experiencing implicit conversions? Actually, yeah, it's right there in Extended Events. plan_affecting_convert Built right into the Extended Events is an event that captures conversions that would affect execution plans, plan_affecting_convert. This event will show both CONVERT and CONVERT_IMPLICIT warnings that you would normally only see within an execution plan. You can capture this event with others. Capturing events together along with causality tracking makes it very easy to track queries that have the issue. Here's one example of how you might capture implicit…
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Implicit Conversion and Performance

SQL Server, SQL Server 2016, T-SQL
Letting SQL Server change data types automatically can seriously impact performance in a negative way. Because a calculation has to be run on each column, you can't get an index seek. Instead, you're forced to use a scan. I can demonstrate this pretty simply. Here's a script that sets up a test table with three columns and three indexes and tosses a couple of rows in: CREATE TABLE dbo.ConvertTest ( BigIntColumn BIGINT NOT NULL, IntColumn INT NOT NULL, DateColumn VARCHAR(30) ); CREATE INDEX BigIntIndex ON dbo.ConvertTest (BigIntColumn); CREATE INDEX IntIndex ON dbo.ConvertTest (IntColumn); CREATE INDEX DateIndex ON dbo.ConvertTest (DateColumn); WITH Nums AS (SELECT TOP (1000000) ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT 1 )) AS n FROM master.sys.all_columns ac1 CROSS JOIN master.sys.all_columns ac2 ) INSERT INTO dbo.ConvertTest (BigIntColumn, IntColumn, DateColumn ) SELECT Nums.n, Nums.n,…
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