BigQuery - What is the difference between Wildcard and partitionned tables [duplicate] - google-bigquery

I try to understand if there is a difference in big query (in the cost or possibility of requesting for example) between :
Create one table per day (like my_table_2018_02_06)
Create a time partitioned table (my-table with time partition by day).
Thanks !

Short explanation: querying multiple tables using Wildcard Tables was the proposed alternative for when BigQuery did not have a partition mechanism available. The natural evolution was to include the feature of Partitioned Table, and currently there is an alpha release consisting in column-based time partitioning, i.e. letting the user define which column (having a DATE or TIMESTAMP data type) will be used for the partitioning.
So currently BigQuery engineers are working in adding more new features to table partitioning, instead of the legacy Wildcard Tables methodology, then I'd suggest that you work with them.
Long explanation: you are comparing two approaches that in fact are used with the same purpose, but which have different implications:
Wildcard Tables: some time ago, when table partitioning was not a feature supported by Big Query, Wildcard Tables was the way to query multiple tables using concise SQL queries. A Wildcard Table represents the union of all the tables that match the wildcard expression specified in the SQL statement. However, Wildcard Tables have some limitations, such as:
Do not support views.
Do not support cached results (queries containing wildcard tables are billed every time they are run, even if the "cached results" option is checked).
Only work with native BigQuery storage (cannot work with external tables [Bigtable, Storage or Drive]).
Only available in standard SQL.
Partitioned Tables: these are unique tables that are divided into segments, split by date. There is a lot of documentation regarding how to work with Partitioned Tables, and regarding the pricing, each partition in a Partitioned Table is considered an independent entity, so if a partition was not updated for the last 90 days, this data will be considered long-term and therefore will be billed with the appropriate discount (as would happen with a normal table). Finally, Partitioned Tables are here to stay, so there are more incoming features to them, such as column-based partitioning, which is currently in alpha, and you can follow its status in this Public Issue Tracker post. On the other hand, there are also some current limitations to be considered:
Maximum of 2500 partitions per Partitioned Table.
Maximum of 2000 partition updates per table per day.
Maximum of 50 partition updates every 10 seconds.
So in general, it would be advisable to work with Partitioned Tables over multiple tables using Wildcard Tables. However, you should always consider your use case and see which one of the possibilities meets your requirements better.

One thing to add to your decision criteria here is caching and usage of legacy vs standard SQL.
Since the syntax in standard SQL for selecting multiple tables uses a wild card there is no way for the query result to be cached.
Interestingly, the query result would have been cached if legacy SQL was used. Just converting the query to standard SQL would disable caching.
This may be important to consider, at least in some cases more than others.
Thank you,
Hazem

Not exactly a time partition, but one can benefit from both worlds - wildcard "partitions" and real partitions to slice the data even further. Below is an example where we first use the data suffix to select only table holding data from that particular date, then we use actual partitioning within the table to limit the amount of data scanned even further.
Create first partitioned table with data suffix
CREATE TABLE `test_2021-01-05` (x INT64, y INT64)
PARTITION BY RANGE_BUCKET(y, GENERATE_ARRAY(0, 500, 1));
insert `test_2021-01-05` (x,y) values (5,1);
insert `test_2021-01-05` (x,y) values (5,2);
insert `test_2021-01-05` (x,y) values (5,3);
Create second partitioned table with data suffix
CREATE TABLE `test_2021-01-04` (x INT64, y INT64)
PARTITION BY RANGE_BUCKET(y, GENERATE_ARRAY(0, 500, 1));
insert `test_2021-01-04` (x,y) values (4,1);
insert `test_2021-01-04` (x,y) values (4,2);
Select all the data from both tables using wildcard notation, 80B of data is the whole test set
select * from `test_*`
-- 80B, all the data
Just select data from one table, which is like partitioning on date
select * from `test_*`
where _TABLE_SUFFIX = "2021-01-05"
-- 48B
Select data both from one table(where I am interested in one date) and only from one partition
select * from `test_*`
where _TABLE_SUFFIX = "2021-01-05"
and y = 1
-- 16B, that was the goal
Select data just from one partition from all the tables
select * from `test_*`
where y = 1
-- 32B, only one partition from both tables
The ultimate goal was to limit the data scanned when reading, thus reducing the cost and increasing performance.

Related

Hive join query optimisation

Table A
---------
col1, col2,Adate,qty
Table B
-------
col2,cost,Bdate
The table sizes are as follows:
A: 1 million
B: 700k
Consider this query:
SELECT
A.col1,
A.col2,
B.Bdate bdate,
SUM(qty)*COLLECT_LIST(cost)[0] price
FROM A
JOIN B
ON (A.col2 = B.col2 AND A.Adate <= B.Bdate)
GROUP BY
A.col1,
A.col2,
B.bdate;
The above hive query takes more than 3 hrs on a cluster of 4 slaves(8GB memory,100 GB disk) and 1 master(16 GB memory, 100 GB disk)
Can this query be optimized? If yes, where can the optimization be possible?
Use Tez and mapjoin.
set hive.auto.convert.join=true; --this enables map-join
set hive.mapjoin.smalltable.filesize=25000000; --adjust for your smaller table to fit in memory
set hive.execution.engine=tez;
Also this computation is not memory-efficient:
SUM(qty)*COLLECT_LIST(cost)[0] price
COLLECT_LIST will collect all cost values in the group into non unique(contains values from ALL rows in the group) and unordered (yes, unordered, because you have no any distribute + sort before collect_list) array. This array can be big enough (the number of elements = the number of rows in the group), depending on your data, then you are taking [0] element, it means that you are picking just any random cost from the group. Does it make any sense to collect array to get just any random element? Use min() or max instead. If it does not matter which cost should be taken, then min(cost) or max(cost) or some other scalar function will consume less memory. You can use first_value analytic function (may require sub-query, but it will be memory-efficient also)
I will try to give you some advices to improve query performance in Hive.
Check the execution engine you are using
set hive.execution.engine;
If you execution engine is mr, rather than MapReduce, you may be able to use Apache Spark or Apache Tez, both of which are faster than MapReduce.
set hive.execution.engine=tez;
Join queries are computationally expensive and can be slow, especially when you’re joining three or more tables, or if you’re working with very large data.
One strategy that can be used to remedy this problem is to join the data in advance and store the pre-joined result in a separate table, which you can then query.
this is one way of denormalizing a normalized database, to make it easier to run analytic queries.
This approach of pre-joining tables has some costs, but it can make analytic queries easier to write and faster to run.
There are some other techniques for improving Hive query performance
Join table ordering (Largest table last)
As with any type of tuning, it is important to understand the internal working of a system. When Hive executes a join,
it needs to select which table is streamed and which table is cached.
Hive takes the last table in the JOIN statement for streaming, so we need to ensure that this streaming table is largest among the two.
A: 1 million B: 700k
Hence, when these two tables are joined it is important that the larger table comes last in the query.
Bucketing stores data in separate files, not separate subdirectories like partitioning.
It divides the data in an effectively random way, not in a predictable way like partitioning.
When records are inserted into a bucketed table, Hive computes hash codes of the values in the specified bucketing column and uses these hash codes to divide the records into buckets.
For this reason, bucketing is sometimes called hash partitioning.
The goal of bucketing is to distribute records evenly across a predefined number of buckets.
Bucketing can improve the performance of joins if all the joined tables are bucketed on the join key column.
For more on bucketing, see the page of the Hive Language Manual describing bucketed tables,
BucketedTables
bucketing-in-hive
Partitioning
Partitioning is a way of dividing a table into related parts based on the values of particular columns like date, city, and department.
Each table in the hive can have one or more partition keys to identify a particular partition.
Using partition it is easy to do queries on slices of the data.
apache-hive-partitions

Need suggestion on splitting table in bigquery based on non-date column along with date partition

We are having a date partitioned table with 5 yrs(with daily incremental load) data running into millions & millions of records. To improve the performance, thinking of splitting the table based on a non-date field(id) as all the queries will include a where clause on that column(id). And also partition each of split tables with date partition so that we can query on a smaller dataset with a date range. we will not be using wildcarded table as we will know the id and planning to append that to the table and run a query against that specific table. Need to know whether that would be good option to pursue to improve performance and reduce the query cost.
[Update]: We went ahead and split the tables based on id column(tablename_id) and made the table date partitioned and clustered with 4 other columns(max supported) which are commonly used in queries. With that we were able to get a better performance and also reduced the data accessed for each query. Based on the testing looks like it is a good option to puruse as long as wildcarded querying of tables is avoided and till Bigquery supports partitioning based on non-date/non-datetime columns.
We split the tables based on the id columns creating multiple tables. Each of the split tables are partition on date column. Apart from that we had it as clustered table on 4 other columns as needed. Find below the performance on a sample dataset. Old Table(UserInfo) has more than 500,000 rows. The stats we captured is for a given date range and id, the performance of old table(non split/combined table) and split table(split based on the ID) in terms of amount of data processed and the time taken for the same query.
This is not possible. BigQuery doesn't support partitioned on non-date columns.
There's a feature request for it. I suggest subscribing to it to keep receiving information regarding its availability.

BigQuery - Max Partiton Date for a Custom Partitioned Table

Is there a metadata operation that can give me the max partitioned date/timestamp in use (for custom partitioned table not Ingest partitioning), such that I do not need to scan a whole table using MAX function? Or some other clever SQL way? Our source table is very large, and it gets a fresh snapshot of data most days - but then that data is generally for current_date()-1...but all in all I cant rely on much except for a query to tell me the max partition in use that doesnt cost the earth for a large table? thought?
SELECT MAX(custom_partition_field) FROM Y
#legacySQL
SELECT MAX(partition_id)
FROM [project:dataset.your_table$__PARTITIONS_SUMMARY__]
It is documented at Listing partitions in partitioned tables

Wilcard on day table vs time partition

I try to understand if there is a difference in big query (in the cost or possibility of requesting for example) between :
Create one table per day (like my_table_2018_02_06)
Create a time partitioned table (my-table with time partition by day).
Thanks !
Short explanation: querying multiple tables using Wildcard Tables was the proposed alternative for when BigQuery did not have a partition mechanism available. The natural evolution was to include the feature of Partitioned Table, and currently there is an alpha release consisting in column-based time partitioning, i.e. letting the user define which column (having a DATE or TIMESTAMP data type) will be used for the partitioning.
So currently BigQuery engineers are working in adding more new features to table partitioning, instead of the legacy Wildcard Tables methodology, then I'd suggest that you work with them.
Long explanation: you are comparing two approaches that in fact are used with the same purpose, but which have different implications:
Wildcard Tables: some time ago, when table partitioning was not a feature supported by Big Query, Wildcard Tables was the way to query multiple tables using concise SQL queries. A Wildcard Table represents the union of all the tables that match the wildcard expression specified in the SQL statement. However, Wildcard Tables have some limitations, such as:
Do not support views.
Do not support cached results (queries containing wildcard tables are billed every time they are run, even if the "cached results" option is checked).
Only work with native BigQuery storage (cannot work with external tables [Bigtable, Storage or Drive]).
Only available in standard SQL.
Partitioned Tables: these are unique tables that are divided into segments, split by date. There is a lot of documentation regarding how to work with Partitioned Tables, and regarding the pricing, each partition in a Partitioned Table is considered an independent entity, so if a partition was not updated for the last 90 days, this data will be considered long-term and therefore will be billed with the appropriate discount (as would happen with a normal table). Finally, Partitioned Tables are here to stay, so there are more incoming features to them, such as column-based partitioning, which is currently in alpha, and you can follow its status in this Public Issue Tracker post. On the other hand, there are also some current limitations to be considered:
Maximum of 2500 partitions per Partitioned Table.
Maximum of 2000 partition updates per table per day.
Maximum of 50 partition updates every 10 seconds.
So in general, it would be advisable to work with Partitioned Tables over multiple tables using Wildcard Tables. However, you should always consider your use case and see which one of the possibilities meets your requirements better.
One thing to add to your decision criteria here is caching and usage of legacy vs standard SQL.
Since the syntax in standard SQL for selecting multiple tables uses a wild card there is no way for the query result to be cached.
Interestingly, the query result would have been cached if legacy SQL was used. Just converting the query to standard SQL would disable caching.
This may be important to consider, at least in some cases more than others.
Thank you,
Hazem
Not exactly a time partition, but one can benefit from both worlds - wildcard "partitions" and real partitions to slice the data even further. Below is an example where we first use the data suffix to select only table holding data from that particular date, then we use actual partitioning within the table to limit the amount of data scanned even further.
Create first partitioned table with data suffix
CREATE TABLE `test_2021-01-05` (x INT64, y INT64)
PARTITION BY RANGE_BUCKET(y, GENERATE_ARRAY(0, 500, 1));
insert `test_2021-01-05` (x,y) values (5,1);
insert `test_2021-01-05` (x,y) values (5,2);
insert `test_2021-01-05` (x,y) values (5,3);
Create second partitioned table with data suffix
CREATE TABLE `test_2021-01-04` (x INT64, y INT64)
PARTITION BY RANGE_BUCKET(y, GENERATE_ARRAY(0, 500, 1));
insert `test_2021-01-04` (x,y) values (4,1);
insert `test_2021-01-04` (x,y) values (4,2);
Select all the data from both tables using wildcard notation, 80B of data is the whole test set
select * from `test_*`
-- 80B, all the data
Just select data from one table, which is like partitioning on date
select * from `test_*`
where _TABLE_SUFFIX = "2021-01-05"
-- 48B
Select data both from one table(where I am interested in one date) and only from one partition
select * from `test_*`
where _TABLE_SUFFIX = "2021-01-05"
and y = 1
-- 16B, that was the goal
Select data just from one partition from all the tables
select * from `test_*`
where y = 1
-- 32B, only one partition from both tables
The ultimate goal was to limit the data scanned when reading, thus reducing the cost and increasing performance.

Ad hoc queries against high cardinality columns

How to improve the performance of ad hoc queries against tables having hundreds of high cardinality columns and millions of records?
In my case, I have a table with one indexed DATE column SDATE, one VARCHAR2 column NE and 750 numeric columns most of them high cardinality columns with values in the range of 0 to 100. The table is updated with almost 20000 new records every hour. The queries against this table look like:
SELECT * FROM TAB WHERE SDATE BETWEEN :SDATE AND :EDATE AND V1 > :V1 AND V3 < :V3
or
SELECT * FROM TAB WHERE SDATE BETWEEN :SDATE AND :EDATE AND NE = :NE AND V4 > :V4
etc.
So far, I have always advised users not to enter big interval dates so as to put a limit on the number of records resulted from the date index access path; however, from time to time it becomes necessary to specify bigger intervals.
If V1, V2, ..., V750 were all low cardinality columns, I would have been able to utilize bitmap indexes. Unfortunately they are not.
What's the advice on this? How should I tackle this problem?
Thanks.
I assume you're stuck with the design, so a few thoughts that I'd probably look at -
1) use partitions - if you have partitioning option
2) use some triggers to denormalise (or normalise in this case) a query table which is more optimised for the query usage
3) make some snapshots
4) look at having a current table or set of tables which has the days records (or some suitable subset), and roll them over to a big table to store hsitory.
It depends on usage patterns and all the other constraints the system has - this may get you started, if you have more details a better solution is probably out there.
I think the big problem would be the inserts. You have an index on sdate wich slow the inserts and speed up the selects. But, returning to your problems:
If users specify an interval wich is large (let's say >5%) it is beter to have the table partitioned by sdate in a daily or weekly or monthly manner.
Oracle partitioning docs
(If you partition the table, don't forget to partition also the index. And if you want to do it live, use exchange partition ).
Also, as workaround, if you have a powerfull machine, you may use parallel queries.
Oracle Parallel docs