Hints

Applies to: Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime

Suggest specific approaches to generate an execution plan.

Syntax

/*+ hint [, ...] */

Partitioning hints

Partitioning hints allow you to suggest a partitioning strategy that Databricks should follow. COALESCE, REPARTITION, and REPARTITION_BY_RANGE hints are supported and are equivalent to coalesce, repartition, and repartitionByRange Dataset APIs, respectively. These hints give you a way to tune performance and control the number of output files. When multiple partitioning hints are specified, multiple nodes are inserted into the logical plan, but the leftmost hint is picked by the optimizer.

Partitioning hint types

• COALESCE

  Reduce the number of partitions to the specified number of partitions. It takes a partition number as a parameter.

• REPARTITION

  Repartition to the specified number of partitions using the specified partitioning expressions. It takes a partition number, column names, or both as parameters.

• REPARTITION_BY_RANGE

  Repartition to the specified number of partitions using the specified partitioning expressions. It takes column names and an optional partition number as parameters.

• REBALANCE

  The REBALANCE hint can be used to rebalance the query result output partitions, so that every partition is of a reasonable size (not too small and not too big). It can take column names as parameters, and try its best to partition the query result by these columns. This is a best-effort: if there are skews, Spark will split the skewed partitions, to make these partitions not too big. This hint is useful when you need to write the result of this query to a table, to avoid too small/big files. This hint is ignored if AQE is not enabled.

Examples

> SELECT /*+ COALESCE(3) */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REPARTITION(3) */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REPARTITION(c) */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REPARTITION(3, c) */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REPARTITION_BY_RANGE(c) */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REPARTITION_BY_RANGE(3, c) */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REBALANCE */ * FROM t;

> SELECT /*+ REBALANCE(c) */ * FROM t;

-- multiple partitioning hints
> EXPLAIN EXTENDED SELECT /*+ REPARTITION(100), COALESCE(500), REPARTITION_BY_RANGE(3, c) */ * FROM t;
== Parsed Logical Plan ==
'UnresolvedHint REPARTITION, [100]
+- 'UnresolvedHint COALESCE, [500]
   +- 'UnresolvedHint REPARTITION_BY_RANGE, [3, 'c]
      +- 'Project [*]
         +- 'UnresolvedRelation [t]

== Analyzed Logical Plan ==
name: string, c: int
Repartition 100, true
+- Repartition 500, false
   +- RepartitionByExpression [c#30 ASC NULLS FIRST], 3
      +- Project [name#29, c#30]
         +- SubqueryAlias spark_catalog.default.t
            +- Relation[name#29,c#30] parquet

== Optimized Logical Plan ==
Repartition 100, true
+- Relation[name#29,c#30] parquet

== Physical Plan ==
Exchange RoundRobinPartitioning(100), false, [id=#121]
+- *(1) ColumnarToRow
   +- FileScan parquet default.t[name#29,c#30] Batched: true, DataFilters: [], Format: Parquet,
      Location: CatalogFileIndex[file:/spark/spark-warehouse/t], PartitionFilters: [],
      PushedFilters: [], ReadSchema: struct<name:string>

Join hints

Join hints allow you to suggest the join strategy that Databricks SQL should use. When different join strategy hints are specified on both sides of a join, Databricks SQL prioritizes hints in the following order: BROADCAST over MERGE over SHUFFLE_HASH over SHUFFLE_REPLICATE_NL. When both sides are specified with the BROADCAST hint or the SHUFFLE_HASH hint, Databricks SQL picks the build side based on the join type and the sizes of the relations. Since a given strategy may not support all join types, Databricks SQL is not guaranteed to use the join strategy suggested by the hint.

Join hint types

• BROADCAST

  Use broadcast join. The join side with the hint is broadcast regardless of autoBroadcastJoinThreshold. If both sides of the join have the broadcast hints, the one with the smaller size (based on stats) is broadcast. The aliases for BROADCAST are BROADCASTJOIN and MAPJOIN.

• MERGE

  Use shuffle sort merge join. The aliases for MERGE are SHUFFLE_MERGE and MERGEJOIN.

• SHUFFLE_HASH

  Use shuffle hash join. If both sides have the shuffle hash hints, Databricks SQL chooses the smaller side (based on stats) as the build side.

• SHUFFLE_REPLICATE_NL

  Use shuffle-and-replicate nested loop join.

Examples

-- Join Hints for broadcast join
> SELECT /*+ BROADCAST(t1) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;
> SELECT /*+ BROADCASTJOIN (t1) */ * FROM t1 left JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;
> SELECT /*+ MAPJOIN(t2) */ * FROM t1 right JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;

-- Join Hints for shuffle sort merge join
> SELECT /*+ SHUFFLE_MERGE(t1) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;
> SELECT /*+ MERGEJOIN(t2) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;
> SELECT /*+ MERGE(t1) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;

-- Join Hints for shuffle hash join
> SELECT /*+ SHUFFLE_HASH(t1) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;

-- Join Hints for shuffle-and-replicate nested loop join
> SELECT /*+ SHUFFLE_REPLICATE_NL(t1) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;

-- When different join strategy hints are specified on both sides of a join, Databricks SQL
-- prioritizes the BROADCAST hint over the MERGE hint over the SHUFFLE_HASH hint
-- over the SHUFFLE_REPLICATE_NL hint.
-- Databricks SQL will issue Warning in the following example
-- org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.analysis.HintErrorLogger: Hint (strategy=merge)
-- is overridden by another hint and will not take effect.
SELECT /*+ BROADCAST(t1), MERGE(t1, t2) */ * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.key = t2.key;

Skew hints

(Delta Lake) See Skew join optimization for information about the SKEW hint.

Related statements

• SELECT