ASPState database locking and growth problems We use an ASPState database to persist .NET Session state on a SQL Server 2005 cluster. We are seeing some strange behavior during peak periods


The DeleteExpiredSessions proc is run every minute via an agent job. Sometimes this job is taking many minutes to run and delete expired sessions
Requests from the application to the ASPState database are very slow. I believe this is because there are exclusive locks being held on the table by DeleteExpiredSessions procedure


Code:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[DeleteExpiredSessions]
AS
        SET NOCOUNT ON
        SET DEADLOCK_PRIORITY LOW 

        DECLARE @now datetime
        SET @now = GETUTCDATE() 

        DECLARE @tblExpiredSessions TABLE
        (
            SessionID nvarchar(88) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
        )

        INSERT INTO @tblExpiredSessions (SessionID)
            SELECT SessionID
            FROM [ASPState].dbo.ASPStateTempSessions WITH (READUNCOMMITTED)
            WHERE Expires &lt; @now

        --EXPIRED SESSION LOGGING 
        /*
        DECLARE @ExpiredSessionCount Int;
        SELECT @ExpiredSessionCount = COUNT(SessionID) 
        FROM @tblExpiredSessions;
        */


        IF @@ROWCOUNT &lt;&gt; 0 
        BEGIN 
            DECLARE ExpiredSessionCursor CURSOR LOCAL FORWARD_ONLY READ_ONLY
            FOR SELECT SessionID FROM @tblExpiredSessions ORDER BY CHECKSUM(NEWID())

            DECLARE @SessionID nvarchar(88)

            OPEN ExpiredSessionCursor

            FETCH NEXT FROM ExpiredSessionCursor INTO @SessionID

            WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 
                BEGIN
                    DELETE FROM [ASPState].dbo.ASPStateTempSessions WHERE SessionID = @SessionID AND Expires &lt; @now
                    FETCH NEXT FROM ExpiredSessionCursor INTO @SessionID
                END

            CLOSE ExpiredSessionCursor

            DEALLOCATE ExpiredSessionCursor

        END 

        --EXPIRED SESSION LOGGING
        /*
        BEGIN TRY
             INSERT INTO DeleteExpiredSessionLog(RunStart, RunEnd, ExpiredSessionsDeleted)
             VALUES (@now, GETUTCDATE(), @ExpiredSessionCount);
        END TRY
        BEGIN CATCH
             --SWALLOW ANY EXCEPTION
        END CATCH;
        */


    RETURN 0                          



The log file is filling up and in some cases forcing autogrowth, despite the db being in simple recovery


In addition to these, a trace reveals multiple requests for the same session coming in quick succession. For example exec dbo.TempResetTimeout @id=N'32gghltsuoesnvlzbehchp2m2014c0f1' 14 times in &lt;1 second, so we're wondering about this as a cause or congestion, but not sure of the root of this behavior.

Any suggestions or explanation around this behavior would be appreciated.
I suspect you implemented Greg's replacement procedure as pre-emptive optimization. The one-row-at-a-time approach restricts locking to a single row, sure, but it's going to take a lot longer - especially if you force SQL Server to attack rows in a random order.

My suggestion would be to revert to the original procedure:

ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.DeleteExpiredSessions
AS
BEGIN
  SET NOCOUNT ON;

  DECLARE @now DATETIME;
  SET @now = GETUTCDATE();

  DELETE ASPState..ASPStateTempSessions 
    WHERE Expires &lt; @now;
END
GO


If you find that this becomes a performance issue because of the locks taken, you can split this out and even reduce impact on the logs using something like:

ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.DeleteExpiredSessions
AS
BEGIN
  SET NOCOUNT ON;

  DECLARE @now DATETIME, @c INT;
  SELECT @now = GETUTCDATE(), @c = 1;

  BEGIN TRANSACTION;

  WHILE @c &lt;&gt; 0
  BEGIN
    ;WITH x AS 
    (
      SELECT TOP (1000) SessionId
        FROM dbo.ASPStateTempSessions
        WHERE Expires &lt; @now
        ORDER BY SessionId
    ) 
    DELETE x;

    SET @c = @@ROWCOUNT;

    IF @@TRANCOUNT = 1
    BEGIN
      COMMIT TRANSACTION;
      BEGIN TRANSACTION;
    END
  END

  IF @@TRANCOUNT = 1
  BEGIN
    COMMIT TRANSACTION;
  END
END
GO


This is going to be much better, IMHO, than using a randomized cursor to delete one row at a time. You can tweak the value in TOP (1000) based on actual observation.

A couple of other ideas that might help:

(a) set the ASPState database's recovery model to simple (it defaults to full).

(b) change ASPState_Job_DeleteExpiredSessions to run every 5 or 10 minutes instead of every minute. If this job is taking > 1 minute to run then it is going to always be running. Hopefully it isn't completely linear, meaning that waiting 5 minutes instead of 1 won't queue up more than 5 minutes of work instead of 1. Implementing my suggestions above should help with this.