Index Planning in Drill

Index planning reduces the I/O operation costs associated with full table scans. If an index is available, Drill can use the index to improve query performance.

Drill can use indexes to create query plans for queries that filter on indexed fields or fields included in an index. Fields in COUNT, COUNT DISTINCT, JOIN, GROUP BY, and ORDER BY also determine index use. Drill can create index-based query plans for queries with and without filters (WHERE clause).
NOTE
In Drill 1.11 and earlier, if a query does not have a filter, the query must have an ORDER BY clause.
Drill can create index plans for queries with an ORDER BY clause whether or not the query contains a filter, as shown in the following example:
SELECT L_LINENUMBER FROM lineitem ORDER BY L_LINENUMBER;
NOTE
In this example, L_LINENUMBER is an indexed field in the index selected for the query plan.
In Drill 1.12 and later, Drill can also create index-based query plans for the following types of queries when they do not have filters (WHERE clause):
  • GROUP BY queries, as shown in the following example where L_COMMITDate is an indexed field in the index selected for the query plan: 
    SELECT L_COMMITDate FROM lineitem GROUP BY L_COMMITDate;
  • JOIN queries, as shown in the following example where L_ORDERKEY and O_ORDERKEY are indexed fields and L_LINESTATUS is an included field in the index selected for the query plan:
    SELECT L.L_LINESTATUS FROM lineitem L, orders O WHERE L.L_ORDERKEY=O.O_ORDERKEY;
    NOTE
    If the planner picks two indexes, one for lineitem and one for orders, a sort merge join is used instead of a hash join.
  • Queries with DISTINCT projections, as shown in the following examples where L_LINENUMBER is an indexed field in the index selected for the query plan:
    SELECT DISTINCT L_LINENUMBER FROM lineitem;
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT L_LINENUMBER) FROM lineitem;

Drill can use indexes for queries that GROUP BY or ORDER BY the leading fields in an index. Drill does not use indexes for queries that GROUP BY or ORDER BY the trailing or included fields in an index.

When a query contains GROUP BY and ORDER BY operations on the leading indexed column, Drill can use the sort order of the index to create index-based query plans that use streaming aggregates and merge joins to improve query performance.

You can run the EXPLAIN PLAN FOR command with a query to see the query plan that Drill creates. See Covering and Non-Covering Queries for more information about index planning in Drill.