Query runs slow in test site on first execution. Why?

I found this query by watching a test site with sql profiler for anything taking over 10 seconds. I plopped the code right out of sql profiler and into sql studio, where it was able to execute quickly. The slow "first run" behavior can be reset by using DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS.

Here's the slow query:

```
exec sp_executesql N'SELECT [t0].*
FROM [dbo].[MyTable] AS [t0]
WHERE [t0].[ParentID] IN (@p0, @p1, @p2, @p3, @p4, @p5, @p6, @p7, @p8, @p9, @p10, @p11, @p12, @p13, @p14, @p15, @p16, @p17, @p18, @p19, @p20, @p21, @p22, @p23, @p24, @p25, @p26, @p27, @p28, @p29, @p30, @p31, @p32, @p33, @p34, @p35, @p36, @p37, @p38, @p39, @p40, @p41, @p42, @p43, @p44, @p45, @p46, @p47, @p48, @p49, @p50, @p51, @p52, @p53, @p54, @p55, @p56, @p57, @p58, @p59, @p60, @p61, @p62, @p63, @p64, @p65, @p66, @p67, @p68, @p69, @p70, @p71, @p72, @p73, @p74)',N'@p0 int,@p1 int,@p2 int,@p3 int,@p4 int,@p5 int,@p6 int,@p7 int,@p8 int,@p9 int,@p10 int,@p11 int,@p12 int,@p13 int,@p14 int,@p15 int,@p16 int,@p17 int,@p18 int,@p19 int,@p20 int,@p21 int,@p22 int,@p23 int,@p24 int,@p25 int,@p26 int,@p27 int,@p28 int,@p29 int,@p30 int,@p31 int,@p32 int,@p33 int,@p34 int,@p35 int,@p36 int,@p37 int,@p38 int,@p39 int,@p40 int,@p41 int,@p42 int,@p43 int,@p44 int,@p45 int,@p46 int,@p47 int,@p48 int,@p49 int,@p50 int,@p51 int,@p52 int,@p53 int,@p54 int,@p55 int,@p56 int,@p57 int,@p58 int,@p59 int,@p60 int,@p61 int,@p62 int,@p63 int,@p64 int,@p65 int,@p66 int,@p67 int,@p68 int,@p69 int,@p70 int,@p71 int,@p72 int,@p73 int,@p74 int',@p0=121888,@p1=317624,@p2=278130,@p3=299426,@p4=128786,@p5=553917,@p6=169682,@p7=316993,@p8=319430,@p9=321347,@p10=377276,@p11=388570,@p12=233344,@p13=304376,@p14=318493,@p15=318190,@p16=144455,@p17=342559,@p18=309867,@p19=258251,@p20=139296,@p21=530970,@p22=288191,@p23=127107,@p24=547572,@p25=617531,@p26=238898,@p27=606923,@p28=267113,@p29=140833,@p30=122554,@p31=298846,@p32=562964,@p33=554626,@p34=414874,@p35=534996,@p36=614977,@p37=230423,@p38=261899,@p39=149666,@p40=179537,@p41=148420

Well, the first time you run the query, it has to load it from disk; subsequently it uses memory, which is much faster than disk. If you clear the buffers, you essentially flush all of that data from memory, so next time you request the data, it has to load it from disk again. Think of disk vs. memory as turtle vs. hare. Outside of test scenarios, you want your queries generally to be running from a warm cache, and shouldn't be purposefully clearing out the buffer pool using DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS;.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#40149, answer score: 12