Performance Bottleneck with IF NOT EXISTS Subquery

Question

I'm encountering a significant performance difference when using an IF NOT EXISTS subquery within a larger query. The subquery executes quickly when run independently, taking approximately 2 seconds. However, when embedded within the larger query, the overall execution time increases dramatically to 4-5 minutes.

I've ensured that appropriate indexes are defined on the relevant tables, including the temporal table nd.tblReqMatSum. Note that tmp.##mytable is a global temporary table with no indexes, but it is almost always very small. Despite this, the performance issue persists.

Here's the problematic query:

declare @result int=0

IF NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT 1
    FROM tmp.##mytable t
    INNER JOIN nd.tblReqMatSum rms ON t.matnr = rms.matnr
    WHERE rms.isActive = 1
)    
BEGIN
    SET @result = 1; 
END

This is the execution plan:

https://www.brentozar.com/pastetheplan/?id=B1sdm3YBp

Answer 1

You say

Note that tmp.##mytable is a global temporary table with no indexes, but it is almost always very small.

But it still has 1000 rows, and a naive nested loop (scanning the whole table each time) is getting you 589796 * 1000 rows being read.

Put an index on that temp table.

CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX CS ON ##material268194 ([material number])

UPDATE STATISTICS ##material268194 WITH FULLSCAN;

Preferably make this index unique if you can.

You also have a type mismatch between the two join columns. One is nvarchar the other is varchar. They should be the same, otherwise you get an implicit conversion, which affects cardinality estimations and therefore often affects plan shape.