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SQL-based ingestion concepts

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This page describes SQL-based batch ingestion using the druid-multi-stage-query extension, new in Druid 24.0. Refer to the ingestion methods table to determine which ingestion method is right for you.

Multi-stage query task engine​

The druid-multi-stage-query extension adds a multi-stage query (MSQ) task engine that executes SQL statements as batch tasks in the indexing service, which execute on Middle Managers. INSERT and REPLACE tasks publish segments just like all other forms of batch ingestion. Each query occupies at least two task slots while running: one controller task, and at least one worker task. As an experimental feature, the MSQ task engine also supports running SELECT queries as batch tasks. The behavior and result format of plain SELECT (without INSERT or REPLACE) is subject to change.

You can execute SQL statements using the MSQ task engine through the Query view in the web console or through the /druid/v2/sql/task API.

For more details on how SQL queries are executed using the MSQ task engine, see multi-stage query tasks.

SQL extensions​

To support ingestion, additional SQL functionality is available through the MSQ task engine.

Read external data with EXTERN​

Query tasks can access external data through the EXTERN function, using any native batch input source and input format.

EXTERN can read multiple files in parallel across different worker tasks. However, EXTERN does not split individual files across multiple worker tasks. If you have a small number of very large input files, you can increase query parallelism by splitting up your input files.

For more information about the syntax, see EXTERN.

See also the set of SQL-friendly input-source-specific table functions which may be more convenient than EXTERN.

Load data with INSERT​

INSERT statements can create a new datasource or append to an existing datasource. In Druid SQL, unlike standard SQL, there is no syntactical difference between creating a table and appending data to a table. Druid does not include a CREATE TABLE statement.

Nearly all SELECT capabilities are available for INSERT ... SELECT queries. Certain exceptions are listed on the Known issues page.

INSERT statements acquire a shared lock to the target datasource. Multiple INSERT statements can run at the same time, for the same datasource, if your cluster has enough task slots.

Like all other forms of batch ingestion, each INSERT statement generates new segments and publishes them at the end of its run. For this reason, it is best suited to loading data in larger batches. Do not use INSERT statements to load data in a sequence of microbatches; for that, use streaming ingestion instead.

When deciding whether to use REPLACE or INSERT, keep in mind that segments generated with REPLACE can be pruned with dimension-based pruning but those generated with INSERT cannot. For more information about the requirements for dimension-based pruning, see Clustering.

For more information about the syntax, see INSERT.

Overwrite data with REPLACE​

REPLACE statements can create a new datasource or overwrite data in an existing datasource. In Druid SQL, unlike standard SQL, there is no syntactical difference between creating a table and overwriting data in a table. Druid does not include a CREATE TABLE statement.

REPLACE uses an OVERWRITE clause to determine which data to overwrite. You can overwrite an entire table, or a specific time range of a table. When you overwrite a specific time range, that time range must align with the granularity specified in the PARTITIONED BY clause.

REPLACE statements acquire an exclusive write lock to the target time range of the target datasource. No other ingestion or compaction operations may proceed for that time range while the task is running. However, ingestion and compaction operations may proceed for other time ranges.

Nearly all SELECT capabilities are available for REPLACE ... SELECT queries. Certain exceptions are listed on the Known issues page.

For more information about the syntax, see REPLACE.

When deciding whether to use REPLACE or INSERT, keep in mind that segments generated with REPLACE can be pruned with dimension-based pruning but those generated with INSERT cannot. For more information about the requirements for dimension-based pruning, see Clustering.

Write to an external destination with EXTERN​

Query tasks can write data to an external destination through the EXTERN function, when it is used with the INTO clause, such as INSERT INTO EXTERN(...). The EXTERN function takes arguments that specify where to write the files. The format can be specified using an AS clause.

For more information about the syntax, see EXTERN.

Primary timestamp​

Druid tables always include a primary timestamp named __time.

It is common to set a primary timestamp by using date and time functions; for example: TIME_FORMAT("timestamp", 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss') AS __time.

The __time column is used for partitioning by time. If you use PARTITIONED BY ALL or PARTITIONED BY ALL TIME, partitioning by time is disabled. In these cases, you do not need to include a __time column in your INSERT statement. However, Druid still creates a __time column in your Druid table and sets all timestamps to 1970-01-01 00:00:00.

For more information, see Primary timestamp.

Partitioning by time​

INSERT and REPLACE statements require the PARTITIONED BY clause, which determines how time-based partitioning is done. In Druid, data is split into one or more segments per time chunk, defined by the PARTITIONED BY granularity.

Partitioning by time is important for three reasons:

  1. Queries that filter by __time (SQL) or intervals (native) are able to use time partitioning to prune the set of segments to consider.
  2. Certain data management operations, such as overwriting and compacting existing data, acquire exclusive write locks on time partitions. Finer-grained partitioning allows finer-grained exclusive write locks.
  3. Each segment file is wholly contained within a time partition. Too-fine-grained partitioning may cause a large number of small segments, which leads to poor performance.

PARTITIONED BY HOUR and PARTITIONED BY DAY are the most common choices to balance these considerations. PARTITIONED BY ALL is suitable if your dataset does not have a primary timestamp.

For more information about the syntax, see PARTITIONED BY.

Clustering​

Within each time chunk defined by time partitioning, data can be further split by the optional CLUSTERED BY clause.

For example, suppose you ingest 100 million rows per hour using PARTITIONED BY HOUR and CLUSTERED BY hostName. The ingestion task will generate segments of roughly 3 million rows — the default value of rowsPerSegment — with lexicographic ranges of hostNames grouped into segments.

Clustering is important for two reasons:

  1. Lower storage footprint due to improved locality, and therefore improved compressibility.
  2. Better query performance due to dimension-based segment pruning, which removes segments from consideration when they cannot possibly contain data matching a query's filter. This speeds up filters like x = 'foo' and x IN ('foo', 'bar').

To activate dimension-based pruning, these requirements must be met:

  • Segments were generated by a REPLACE statement, not an INSERT statement.
  • All CLUSTERED BY columns are single-valued string columns.

If these requirements are not met, Druid still clusters data during ingestion but will not be able to perform dimension-based segment pruning at query time. You can tell if dimension-based segment pruning is possible by using the sys.segments table to inspect the shard_spec for the segments generated by an ingestion query. If they are of type range or single, then dimension-based segment pruning is possible. Otherwise, it is not. The shard spec type is also available in the Segments view under the Partitioning column.

For more information about syntax, see CLUSTERED BY.

Rollup​

Rollup is a technique that pre-aggregates data during ingestion to reduce the amount of data stored. Intermediate aggregations are stored in the generated segments, and further aggregation is done at query time. This reduces storage footprint and improves performance, often dramatically.

To perform ingestion with rollup:

  1. Use GROUP BY. The columns in the GROUP BY clause become dimensions, and aggregation functions become metrics.
  2. Set finalizeAggregations: false in your context. This causes aggregation functions to write their internal state to the generated segments, instead of the finalized end result, and enables further aggregation at query time.
  3. See ARRAY types for information about ingesting ARRAY columns
  4. See multi-value dimensions for information to ingest multi-value VARCHAR columns

When you do all of these things, Druid understands that you intend to do an ingestion with rollup, and it writes rollup-related metadata into the generated segments. Other applications can then use segmentMetadata queries to retrieve rollup-related information.

The following aggregation functions are supported for rollup at ingestion time: COUNT (but switch to SUM at query time), SUM, MIN, MAX, EARLIEST and EARLIEST_BY, LATEST and LATEST_BY, APPROX_COUNT_DISTINCT, APPROX_COUNT_DISTINCT_BUILTIN, APPROX_COUNT_DISTINCT_DS_HLL, APPROX_COUNT_DISTINCT_DS_THETA, and DS_QUANTILES_SKETCH (but switch to APPROX_QUANTILE_DS at query time). Do not use AVG; instead, use SUM and COUNT at ingest time and compute the quotient at query time.

For an example, see INSERT with rollup example.

Multi-stage query tasks​

Execution flow​

When you execute a SQL statement using the task endpoint /druid/v2/sql/task, the following happens:

  1. The Broker plans your SQL query into a native query, as usual.

  2. The Broker wraps the native query into a task of type query_controller and submits it to the indexing service.

  3. The Broker returns the task ID to you and exits.

  4. The controller task launches some number of worker tasks determined by the maxNumTasks and taskAssignment context parameters. You can set these settings individually for each query.

  5. Worker tasks of type query_worker execute the query.

  6. If the query is a SELECT query, the worker tasks send the results back to the controller task, which writes them into its task report. If the query is an INSERT or REPLACE query, the worker tasks generate and publish new Druid segments to the provided datasource.

Parallelism​

The maxNumTasks query parameter determines the maximum number of tasks your query will use, including the one query_controller task. Generally, queries perform better with more workers. The lowest possible value of maxNumTasks is two (one worker and one controller). Do not set this higher than the number of free slots available in your cluster; doing so will result in a TaskStartTimeout error.

When reading external data, EXTERN can read multiple files in parallel across different worker tasks. However, EXTERN does not split individual files across multiple worker tasks. If you have a small number of very large input files, you can increase query parallelism by splitting up your input files.

The druid.worker.capacity server property on each Middle Manager determines the maximum number of worker tasks that can run on each server at once. Worker tasks run single-threaded, which also determines the maximum number of processors on the server that can contribute towards multi-stage queries.

Memory usage​

Increasing the amount of available memory can improve performance in certain cases:

  • Segment generation becomes more efficient when data doesn't spill to disk as often.
  • Sorting stage output data becomes more efficient since available memory affects the number of required sorting passes.

Worker tasks use both JVM heap memory and off-heap ("direct") memory.

On Peons launched by Middle Managers, the bulk of the JVM heap (75%, less any space used by lookups) is split up into two bundles of equal size: one processor bundle and one worker bundle. Each one comprises 37.5% of the available JVM heap, less any space used by lookups.

Depending on the type of query, controller and worker tasks may use sketches for determining partition boundaries. The heap footprint of these sketches is capped at 10% of available memory, or 300 MB, whichever is lower.

The processor memory bundle is used for query processing and segment generation. Each processor bundle must also provides space to buffer I/O between stages. Specifically, each downstream stage requires 1 MB of buffer space for each upstream worker. For example, if you have 100 workers running in stage 0, and stage 1 reads from stage 0, then each worker in stage 1 requires 1M * 100 = 100 MB of memory for frame buffers.

The worker memory bundle is used for sorting stage output data prior to shuffle. Workers can sort more data than fits in memory; in this case, they will switch to using disk.

Worker tasks also use off-heap ("direct") memory. Set the amount of direct memory available (-XX:MaxDirectMemorySize) to at least (druid.processing.numThreads + 1) * druid.processing.buffer.sizeBytes. Increasing the amount of direct memory available beyond the minimum does not speed up processing.

Disk usage​

Worker tasks use local disk for four purposes:

  • Temporary copies of input data. Each temporary file is deleted before the next one is read. You only need enough temporary disk space to store one input file at a time per task.
  • Temporary data related to segment generation. You only need enough temporary disk space to store one segments' worth of data at a time per task. This is generally less than 2 GB per task.
  • External sort of data prior to shuffle. Requires enough space to store a compressed copy of the entire output dataset for a task.
  • Storing stage output data during a shuffle. Requires enough space to store a compressed copy of the entire output dataset for a task.

Workers use the task working directory, given by druid.indexer.task.baseDir, for these items. It is important that this directory has enough space available for these purposes.