Develop Reference

Importing database with psycopg2 results a table with fewer lines than expected [duplicate]

I am using psycopg2 module in python to read from postgres database, I need to some operation on all rows in a column, that has more than 1 million rows.
I would like to know would cur.fetchall() fail or cause my server to go down? (since my RAM might not be that big to hold all that data)
q="SELECT names from myTable;"
cur.execute(q)
rows=cur.fetchall()
for row in rows:
doSomething(row)
what is the smarter way to do this?

The solution Burhan pointed out reduces the memory usage for large datasets by only fetching single rows:
row = cursor.fetchone()
However, I noticed a significant slowdown in fetching rows one-by-one. I access an external database over an internet connection, that might be a reason for it.
Having a server side cursor and fetching bunches of rows proved to be the most performant solution. You can change the sql statements (as in alecxe answers) but there is also pure python approach using the feature provided by psycopg2:
cursor = conn.cursor('name_of_the_new_server_side_cursor')
cursor.execute(""" SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 1000000 """)
while True:
rows = cursor.fetchmany(5000)
if not rows:
break
for row in rows:
# do something with row
pass
you find more about server side cursors in the psycopg2 wiki

Consider using server side cursor:
When a database query is executed, the Psycopg cursor usually fetches
all the records returned by the backend, transferring them to the
client process. If the query returned an huge amount of data, a
proportionally large amount of memory will be allocated by the client.
If the dataset is too large to be practically handled on the client
side, it is possible to create a server side cursor. Using this kind
of cursor it is possible to transfer to the client only a controlled
amount of data, so that a large dataset can be examined without
keeping it entirely in memory.
Here's an example:
cursor.execute("DECLARE super_cursor BINARY CURSOR FOR SELECT names FROM myTable")
while True:
cursor.execute("FETCH 1000 FROM super_cursor")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
if not rows:
break
for row in rows:
doSomething(row)

fetchall() fetches up to the arraysize limit, so to prevent a massive hit on your database you can either fetch rows in manageable batches, or simply step through the cursor till its exhausted:
row = cur.fetchone()
while row:
# do something with row
row = cur.fetchone()

Here is the code to use for simple server side cursor with the speed of fetchmany management.
The principle is to use named cursor in Psycopg2 and give it a good itersize to load many rows at once like fetchmany would do but with a single loop of for rec in cursor that does an implicit fetchnone().
With this code I make queries of 150 millions rows from multi-billion rows table within 1 hour and 200 meg ram.

EDIT: using fetchmany (along with fetchone() and fetchall(), even with a row limit (arraysize) will still send the entire resultset, keeping it client-side (stored in the underlying c library, I think libpq) for any additional fetchmany() calls, etc. Without using a named cursor (which would require an open transaction), you have to resort to using limit in the sql with an order-by, then analyzing the results and augmenting the next query with where (ordered_val = %(last_seen_val)s and primary_key > %(last_seen_pk)s OR ordered_val > %(last_seen_val)s)
This is misleading for the library to say the least, and there should be a blurb in the documentation about this. I don't know why it's not there.
Not sure a named cursor is a good fit without having a need to scroll forward/backward interactively? I could be wrong here.
The fetchmany loop is tedious but I think it's the best solution here. To make life easier, you can use the following:
from functools import partial
from itertools import chain
# from_iterable added >= python 2.7
from_iterable = chain.from_iterable
# util function
def run_and_iterate(curs, sql, parms=None, chunksize=1000):
if parms is None:
curs.execute(sql)
else:
curs.execute(sql, parms)
chunks_until_empty = iter(partial(fetchmany, chunksize), [])
return from_iterable(chunks_until_empty)
# example scenario
for row in run_and_iterate(cur, 'select * from waffles_table where num_waffles > %s', (10,)):
print 'lots of waffles: %s' % (row,)

As I was reading comments and answers I thought I should clarify something about fetchone and Server-side cursors for future readers.
With normal cursors (client-side), Psycopg fetches all the records returned by the backend, transferring them to the client process. The whole records are buffered in the client's memory. It is when you execute a query like curs.execute('SELECT * FROM ...'.
This question also confirms that.
All the fetch* methods are there for accessing this stored data.
Q: So how fetchone can help us memory wise ?
A: It fetches only one record from the stored data and creates a single Python object and hands you in your Python code while fetchall will fetch and create n Python objects from this data and hands it to you all in one chunk.
So If your table has 1,000,000 records, this is what's going on in memory:
curs.execute --> whole 1,000,000 result set + fetchone --> 1 Python object
curs.execute --> whole 1,000,000 result set + fetchall --> 1,000,000 Python objects
Of-course fetchone helped but still we have the whole records in memory. This is where Server-side cursors comes into play:
PostgreSQL also has its own concept of cursor (sometimes also called
portal). When a database cursor is created, the query is not
necessarily completely processed: the server might be able to produce
results only as they are needed. Only the results requested are
transmitted to the client: if the query result is very large but the
client only needs the first few records it is possible to transmit
only them.
...
their interface is the same, but behind the scene they
send commands to control the state of the cursor on the server (for
instance when fetching new records or when moving using scroll()).
So you won't get the whole result set in one chunk.
The draw-back :
The downside is that the server needs to keep track of the partially
processed results, so it uses more memory and resources on the server.

Python code running too slow (SQLITE)

I have located a piece of code that runs quite slow (in my opinion) and would liek to know what you guys think. The code in question is as follows and is supposed to:
Query a database and get 2 fields, a field and its value
Populate the object dictionary with their values
The code is:
query = "SELECT Field, Value FROM metrics " \
"WHERE Status NOT LIKE '%ERROR%' AND Symbol LIKE '{0}'".format(self.symbol)
query = self.db.run(query, True)
if query is not None:
for each in query:
self.metrics[each[0].lower()] = each[1]
The query is run using a db class I created that is very simple:
def run(self, query, onerrorkeeprunning=False):
# Run query provided and return result
try:
con = lite.connect(self.db)
cur = con.cursor()
cur.execute(query)
con.commit()
runsql = cur.fetchall()
data = []
for rows in runsql:
line = []
for element in rows:
line.append(element)
data.append(line)
return data
except lite.Error, e:
if onerrorkeeprunning is True:
if con:
con.close()
return
else:
print 'Error %s:' % e.args[0]
sys.exit(1)
finally:
if con:
con.close()
I know there are tons of ways of writting this code and I was trying to keep things simple but for 24 fields this takes 0.03s so if I have 1,000 elements that is 30s and I find it a little too long!
EDIT: on further review, runsql = cur.fetchall() is the line that takes the most to run.
Any help will be much appreciated.
2nd EDIT: Looking online further, I have found the issue lies with the fetchall() commant and not with my query or the initialization of the DB. Has anybody been able to imporve the performance of the result fetching? (Some people mentioned changing the SQL code but this is not to blame, it runs pretty fast but then the slowness comes when you try to grab those results)

fetchall() reads all results, and returns them in a temporary list.
Your run() function then just puts all the results into another list.
Your top-level code then copies these values into yet another dictionary.
You should fetch only the row you need (which can be done directly on the cursor), and handle it directly:
cur.execute("SELECT Field, Value ...")
for row in cur:
self.metrics[row[0].lower()] = row[1]
Note: this distributes the cost of the SQL query over all for iteration; the overall time spent in the database does not change.
This code improves only on the time that would have been spent handling all the temporary variables.

Using the python MySQLDB SScursor with nested queries

The typical MySQLdb library query can use a lot of memory and perform poorly in Python, when a large result set is generated. For example:
cursor.execute("SELECT id, name FROM `table`")
for i in xrange(cursor.rowcount):
id, name = cursor.fetchone()
print id, name
There is an optional cursor that will fetch just one row at a time, really speeding up the script and cutting the memory footprint of the script a lot.
import MySQLdb
import MySQLdb.cursors
conn = MySQLdb.connect(user="user", passwd="password", db="dbname",
cursorclass = MySQLdb.cursors.SSCursor)
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute("SELECT id, name FROM users")
row = cur.fetchone()
while row is not None:
doSomething()
row = cur.fetchone()
cur.close()
conn.close()
But I can't find anything about using SSCursor with with nested queries. If this is the definition of doSomething():
def doSomething()
cur2 = conn.cursor()
cur2.execute('select id,x,y from table2')
rows = cur2.fetchall()
for row in rows:
doSomethingElse(row)
cur2.close()
then the script throws the following error:
_mysql_exceptions.ProgrammingError: (2014, "Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now")
It sounds as if SSCursor is not compatible with nested queries. Is that true? If so that's too bad because the main loop seems to run too slowly with the standard cursor.

This problem in discussed a bit in the MySQLdb User's Guide, under the heading of the threadsafety attribute (emphasis mine):
The MySQL protocol can not handle multiple threads using the same
connection at once. Some earlier versions of MySQLdb utilized locking
to achieve a threadsafety of 2. While this is not terribly hard to
accomplish using the standard Cursor class (which uses
mysql_store_result()), it is complicated by SSCursor (which uses
mysql_use_result(); with the latter you must ensure all the rows have
been read before another query can be executed.
The documentation for the MySQL C API function mysql_use_result() gives more information about your error message:
When using mysql_use_result(), you must execute mysql_fetch_row()
until a NULL value is returned, otherwise, the unfetched rows are
returned as part of the result set for your next query. The C API
gives the error Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now
if you forget to do this!
In other words, you must completely fetch the result set from any unbuffered cursor (i.e., one that uses mysql_use_result() instead of mysql_store_result() - with MySQLdb, that means SSCursor and SSDictCursor) before you can execute another statement over the same connection.
In your situation, the most direct solution would be to open a second connection to use while iterating over the result set of the unbuffered query. (It wouldn't work to simply get a buffered cursor from the same connection; you'd still have to advance past the unbuffered result set before using the buffered cursor.)
If your workflow is something like "loop through a big result set, executing N little queries for each row," consider looking into MySQL's stored procedures as an alternative to nesting cursors from different connections. You can still use MySQLdb to call the procedure and get the results, though you'll definitely want to read the documentation of MySQLdb's callproc() method since it doesn't conform to Python's database API specs when retrieving procedure outputs.
A second alternative is to stick to buffered cursors, but split up your query into batches. That's what I ended up doing for a project last year where I needed to loop through a set of millions of rows, parse some of the data with an in-house module, and perform some INSERT and UPDATE queries after processing each row. The general idea looks something like this:
QUERY = r"SELECT id, name FROM `table` WHERE id BETWEEN %s and %s;"
BATCH_SIZE = 5000
i = 0
while True:
cursor.execute(QUERY, (i + 1, i + BATCH_SIZE))
result = cursor.fetchall()
# If there's no possibility of a gap as large as BATCH_SIZE in your table ids,
# you can test to break out of the loop like this (otherwise, adjust accordingly):
if not result:
break
for row in result:
doSomething()
i += BATCH_SIZE
One other thing I would note about your example code is that you can iterate directly over a cursor in MySQLdb instead of calling fetchone() explicitly over xrange(cursor.rowcount). This is especially important when using an unbuffered cursor, because the rowcount attribute is undefined and will give a very unexpected result (see: Python MysqlDB using cursor.rowcount with SSDictCursor returning wrong count).

python postgres can I fetchall() 1 million rows?

I am using psycopg2 module in python to read from postgres database, I need to some operation on all rows in a column, that has more than 1 million rows.
I would like to know would cur.fetchall() fail or cause my server to go down? (since my RAM might not be that big to hold all that data)
q="SELECT names from myTable;"
cur.execute(q)
rows=cur.fetchall()
for row in rows:
doSomething(row)
what is the smarter way to do this?

The solution Burhan pointed out reduces the memory usage for large datasets by only fetching single rows:
row = cursor.fetchone()
However, I noticed a significant slowdown in fetching rows one-by-one. I access an external database over an internet connection, that might be a reason for it.
Having a server side cursor and fetching bunches of rows proved to be the most performant solution. You can change the sql statements (as in alecxe answers) but there is also pure python approach using the feature provided by psycopg2:
cursor = conn.cursor('name_of_the_new_server_side_cursor')
cursor.execute(""" SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 1000000 """)
while True:
rows = cursor.fetchmany(5000)
if not rows:
break
for row in rows:
# do something with row
pass
you find more about server side cursors in the psycopg2 wiki

Consider using server side cursor:
When a database query is executed, the Psycopg cursor usually fetches
all the records returned by the backend, transferring them to the
client process. If the query returned an huge amount of data, a
proportionally large amount of memory will be allocated by the client.
If the dataset is too large to be practically handled on the client
side, it is possible to create a server side cursor. Using this kind
of cursor it is possible to transfer to the client only a controlled
amount of data, so that a large dataset can be examined without
keeping it entirely in memory.
Here's an example:
cursor.execute("DECLARE super_cursor BINARY CURSOR FOR SELECT names FROM myTable")
while True:
cursor.execute("FETCH 1000 FROM super_cursor")
rows = cursor.fetchall()
if not rows:
break
for row in rows:
doSomething(row)

fetchall() fetches up to the arraysize limit, so to prevent a massive hit on your database you can either fetch rows in manageable batches, or simply step through the cursor till its exhausted:
row = cur.fetchone()
while row:
# do something with row
row = cur.fetchone()

Here is the code to use for simple server side cursor with the speed of fetchmany management.
The principle is to use named cursor in Psycopg2 and give it a good itersize to load many rows at once like fetchmany would do but with a single loop of for rec in cursor that does an implicit fetchnone().
With this code I make queries of 150 millions rows from multi-billion rows table within 1 hour and 200 meg ram.

EDIT: using fetchmany (along with fetchone() and fetchall(), even with a row limit (arraysize) will still send the entire resultset, keeping it client-side (stored in the underlying c library, I think libpq) for any additional fetchmany() calls, etc. Without using a named cursor (which would require an open transaction), you have to resort to using limit in the sql with an order-by, then analyzing the results and augmenting the next query with where (ordered_val = %(last_seen_val)s and primary_key > %(last_seen_pk)s OR ordered_val > %(last_seen_val)s)
This is misleading for the library to say the least, and there should be a blurb in the documentation about this. I don't know why it's not there.
Not sure a named cursor is a good fit without having a need to scroll forward/backward interactively? I could be wrong here.
The fetchmany loop is tedious but I think it's the best solution here. To make life easier, you can use the following:
from functools import partial
from itertools import chain
# from_iterable added >= python 2.7
from_iterable = chain.from_iterable
# util function
def run_and_iterate(curs, sql, parms=None, chunksize=1000):
if parms is None:
curs.execute(sql)
else:
curs.execute(sql, parms)
chunks_until_empty = iter(partial(fetchmany, chunksize), [])
return from_iterable(chunks_until_empty)
# example scenario
for row in run_and_iterate(cur, 'select * from waffles_table where num_waffles > %s', (10,)):
print 'lots of waffles: %s' % (row,)

As I was reading comments and answers I thought I should clarify something about fetchone and Server-side cursors for future readers.
With normal cursors (client-side), Psycopg fetches all the records returned by the backend, transferring them to the client process. The whole records are buffered in the client's memory. It is when you execute a query like curs.execute('SELECT * FROM ...'.
This question also confirms that.
All the fetch* methods are there for accessing this stored data.
Q: So how fetchone can help us memory wise ?
A: It fetches only one record from the stored data and creates a single Python object and hands you in your Python code while fetchall will fetch and create n Python objects from this data and hands it to you all in one chunk.
So If your table has 1,000,000 records, this is what's going on in memory:
curs.execute --> whole 1,000,000 result set + fetchone --> 1 Python object
curs.execute --> whole 1,000,000 result set + fetchall --> 1,000,000 Python objects
Of-course fetchone helped but still we have the whole records in memory. This is where Server-side cursors comes into play:
PostgreSQL also has its own concept of cursor (sometimes also called
portal). When a database cursor is created, the query is not
necessarily completely processed: the server might be able to produce
results only as they are needed. Only the results requested are
transmitted to the client: if the query result is very large but the
client only needs the first few records it is possible to transmit
only them.
...
their interface is the same, but behind the scene they
send commands to control the state of the cursor on the server (for
instance when fetching new records or when moving using scroll()).
So you won't get the whole result set in one chunk.
The draw-back :
The downside is that the server needs to keep track of the partially
processed results, so it uses more memory and resources on the server.

Slow MySQL queries in Python but fast elsewhere

I'm having a heckuva time dealing with slow MySQL queries in Python. In one area of my application, "load data infile" goes quick. In an another area, the select queries are VERY slow.
Executing the same query in PhpMyAdmin AND Navicat (as a second test) yields a response ~5x faster than in Python.
A few notes...
I switched to MySQLdb as the connector and am also using SSCursor. No performance increase.
The database is optimized, indexed etc. I'm porting this application to Python from PHP/Codeigniter where it ran fine (I foolishly thought getting out of PHP would help speed it up)
PHP/Codeigniter executes the select queries swiftly. For example, one key aspect of the application takes ~2 seconds in PHP/Codeigniter, but is taking 10 seconds in Python BEFORE any of the analysis of the data is done.
My link to the database is fairly standard...
dbconn=MySQLdb.connect(host="127.0.0.1",user="*",passwd="*",db="*", cursorclass = MySQLdb.cursors.SSCursor)
Any insights/help/advice would be greatly appreciated!
UPDATE
In terms of fetching/handling the results, I've tried it a few ways. The initial query is fairly standard...
# Run Query
cursor.execute(query)
I removed all of the code within this loop just to make sure it wasn't the case bottlekneck, and it's not. I put dummy code in its place. The entire process did not speed up at all.
db_results = "test"
# Loop Results
for row in cursor:
a = 0 (this was the dummy code I put in to test)
return db_results
The query result itself is only 501 rows (large amount of columns)... took 0.029 seconds outside of Python. Taking significantly longer than that within Python.
The project is related to horse racing. The query is done within this function. The query itself is long, however, it runs well outside of Python. I commented out the code within the loop on purpose for testing... also the print(query) in hopes of figuring this out.
# Get PPs
def get_pps(race_ids):
# Comma Race List
race_list = ','.join(map(str, race_ids))
# PPs Query
query = ("SELECT raceindex.race_id, entries.entry_id, entries.prognum, runlines.line_id, runlines.track_code, runlines.race_date, runlines.race_number, runlines.horse_name, runlines.line_date, runlines.line_track, runlines.line_race, runlines.surface, runlines.distance, runlines.starters, runlines.race_grade, runlines.post_position, runlines.c1pos, runlines.c1posn, runlines.c1len, runlines.c2pos, runlines.c2posn, runlines.c2len, runlines.c3pos, runlines.c3posn, runlines.c3len, runlines.c4pos, runlines.c4posn, runlines.c4len, runlines.c5pos, runlines.c5posn, runlines.c5len, runlines.finpos, runlines.finposn, runlines.finlen, runlines.dq, runlines.dh, runlines.dqplace, runlines.beyer, runlines.weight, runlines.comment, runlines.long_comment, runlines.odds, runlines.odds_position, runlines.entries, runlines.track_variant, runlines.speed_rating, runlines.sealed_track, runlines.frac1, runlines.frac2, runlines.frac3, runlines.frac4, runlines.frac5, runlines.frac6, runlines.final_time, charts.raceshape "
"FROM hrdb_raceindex raceindex "
"INNER JOIN hrdb_runlines runlines ON runlines.race_date = raceindex.race_date AND runlines.track_code = raceindex.track_code AND runlines.race_number = raceindex.race_number "
"INNER JOIN hrdb_entries entries ON entries.race_date=runlines.race_date AND entries.track_code=runlines.track_code AND entries.race_number=runlines.race_number AND entries.horse_name=runlines.horse_name "
"LEFT JOIN hrdb_charts charts ON runlines.line_date = charts.race_date AND runlines.line_track = charts.track_code AND runlines.line_race = charts.race_number "
"WHERE raceindex.race_id IN (" + race_list + ") "
"ORDER BY runlines.line_date DESC;")
print(query)
# Run Query
cursor.execute(query)
# Query Fields
fields = [i[0] for i in cursor.description]
# PPs List
pps = []
# Loop Results
for row in cursor:
a = 0
#this_pp = {}
#for i, value in enumerate(row):
# this_pp[fields[i]] = value
#pps.append(this_pp)
return pps
One final note... I haven't considered the ideal way to handle the result. I believe one cursor allows the result to come back as a set of dictionaries. I haven't even made it to that point yet as the query and return itself is so slow.

Tho you have only 501 rows it looks like you have over 50 columns. How much total data is being passed from MySQL to Python?
501 rows x 55 columns = 27,555 cells returned.
If each cell averaged "only" 1K that would be close to 27MB of data returned.
To get a sense of how much data mysql is pushing you can add this to your query:
SHOW SESSION STATUS LIKE "bytes_sent"
Is your server well-resourced? Is memory allocation well configured?
My guess is that when you are using PHPMyAdmin you are getting paginated results. This masks the issue of MySQL returning more data than your server can handle (I don't use Navicat, not sure about how that returns results).
Perhaps the Python process is memory-constrained and when faced with this large result set it has to out page out to disk to handle the result set.
If you reduce the number of columns called and/or constrain to, say LIMIT 10 on your query do you get improved speed?
Can you see if the server running Python is paging to disk when this query is called? Can you see what memory is allocated to Python, how much is used during the process and how that allocation and usage compares to those same values in the PHP version?
Can you allocate more memory to your constrained resource?
Can you reduce the number of columns or rows that are called through pagination or asynchronous loading?

I know this is late, however, I have run into similar issues with mysql and python. My solution is to use queries using another language...I use R to make my queries which is blindly fast, do what I can in R and then send the data to python if need be for more general programming, although R has many general purpose libraries as well. Just wanted to post something that may help someone who has a similar problem, and I know this side steps the heart of the problem.