Optimizing SQL SP, avoid temp tables

Question

I have a SP which is performing really poorly right now. I have some indexes in the key columns, but the speed of the SP is around 14 seconds to pull out 5k rows, which I would expect to be sub-second. I assume it's related to the number of temp tables I have in there, but I'm not sure exactly how to avoid them giving I need to access the data in various places in the SP.

Although I have indexes and things set up, please do suggest anything that you think would improve performance, I'd rather be told to do something I'm already doing, rather than not be told something important! :)

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[GetPlacesByLatLong]
@minLat FLOAT,
@maxLat FLOAT,
@minLong FLOAT,
@maxLong FLOAT,
@startTime BIGINT,
@endTime BIGINT
AS

SELECT Place_routes.*
INTO #tempRoutes
FROM Place_routes
WHERE latitude BETWEEN @minLat AND @maxLat
AND longitude BETWEEN @minLong AND @maxLong


SELECT Place.*, #tempRoutes.id AS route_id
INTO #tempRoute_Places
FROM #tempRoutes
INNER JOIN link_Place_routes
ON link_Place_routes.route_id = #tempRoutes.id
INNER JOIN Place ON link_Place_routes.Place_id = Place.id
WHERE latitude BETWEEN @minLat AND @maxLat
AND longitude BETWEEN @minLong AND @maxLong

SELECT * 
INTO #tempLocations 
FROM locations 
WHERE latitude BETWEEN @minLat AND @maxLat
AND longitude BETWEEN @minLong AND @maxLong

SELECT * INTO #tempPlaces FROM (
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT Place.*, 0 as route_id
FROM #tempLocations
INNER JOIN Place
ON #tempLocations.id = Place.location 
WHERE time_start BETWEEN @startTime AND @endTime
UNION 
SELECT #tempRoute_Places.* FROM #tempRoute_Places
) AS blah
UNION
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT Place.*, 0 as route_id
FROM #tempLocations
INNER JOIN Place
ON #tempLocations.id IN (SELECT #tempRoute_Places.location FROM #tempRoute_Places)
WHERE time_start BETWEEN @startTime AND @endTime
UNION 
SELECT #tempRoute_Places.* FROM #tempRoute_Places
) AS blah
WHERE time_start BETWEEN @startTime AND @endTime
OR route_id <> 0
) AS blah2

ORDER BY id


SELECT * FROM #tempRoutes

SELECT * FROM #tempPlaces
UNION
SELECT external_Place_routes.Place_id, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, external_Place_routes.route_id, null, null FROM external_Place_routes
SELECT * FROM #tempLocations
WHERE id IN (SELECT location FROM #tempPlaces)
SELECT * FROM Place_images 
WHERE Place_id in ( SELECT id FROM #tempPlaces )
ORDER BY Place_id

SELECT link_Place_types.Place_id,[types].*
FROM link_Place_types 
INNER JOIN [types] 
ON [types].id = link_Place_types.type_id
WHERE Place_id in ( SELECT id FROM #tempPlaces )
ORDER BY link_Place_types.Place_id

Answer 1

Temporary tables in your case are probably rather helping the performance.

Three things that immediatelly pop out:

1. Don't use SELECT * in production code, ever. Try to narrow down the select list to just the columns you really need -- less data to shuffle around and you could even create covering indexes then.
2. Get rid of the ORDER BY id from the SELECT * INTO #tempPlaces statement, it serves no purpose and introduces sorting (or could affect the index choice)
3. Make sure that datatypes of parameters match the datatypes of columns. Otherwise, the implicit conversions could prevent the use of indexes (you do have indexes on predicate columns, don't you?).

For anything else we'll have to see the execution plan.