19.2. Table Statistics

Presto supports statistics based optimizations for queries. For a query to take advantage of these optimizations, Presto must have statistical information for the tables in that query.

Table statistics are provided to the query planner by connectors. Currently the only connector that supports statistics is the Hive Connector.

Table Layouts

Statistics are exposed to the query planner by a table layout. A table layout represents a subset of a table’s data and contains information about the organizational properties of that data (like sort order and bucketing).

The number of table layouts available for a table and the details of those table layouts are specific to each connector. Using the Hive connector as an example:

  • Non-partitioned tables have just one table layout representing all data in the table
  • Partitioned tables have a family of table layouts. Each set of partitions to be scanned represents one table layout. Presto will try to pick a table layout consisting of the smallest number of partitions based on filtering predicates from the query.

Available Statistics

Currently, the following statistics are available in Presto:

  • For the table:
    • row count: the total number of rows for the table layout
  • For each column in a table:
    • data size: the data size that needs to be read
    • nulls fraction: the fraction of null values
    • distinct value count: the number of distinct values
    • low value: the smallest value in the column
    • high value: the largest value in the column

The set of statistics available for a particular query depends on the connector being used and can also vary by table or even by table layout. For example, the Hive connector does not currently provide statistics on data size.

Displaying Table Statistics

Table statistics can be displayed via the Presto SQL interface using the SHOW STATS command. There are two flavors of the command:

  • SHOW STATS FOR <table_name> will show statistics for the table layout representing all data in the table
  • SHOW STATS FOR (SELECT <column_list|*> FROM <table_name> WHERE <filtering_condition>) will show statistics for the table layout of table t representing a subset of data after applying the given filtering condition. Both the column list and the filtering condition used in the WHERE clause can reference table columns.

In both cases, the SHOW STATS command outputs two types of rows. For each column in the table there is a row with column_name equal to the name of that column. These rows expose column-related statistics for a table (data size, nulls count, distinct values count, min value, max value). Additionally there is one row with NULL as the column_name. This row contains table-layout wide statistics - for now just the row count.

For example:

presto:default> SHOW STATS FOR nation;

 column_name | data_size | distinct_values_count | nulls_fraction | row_count |     low_value      |     high_value
-------------+-----------+-----------------------+----------------+-----------+--------------------+--------------------
 regionkey   | NULL      |                   5.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | 0                  | 4
 name        | NULL      |                  25.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | ALGERIA            | VIETNAM
 comment     | NULL      |                  25.0 |            0.0 | NULL      |  haggle. carefu... | y final package...
 nationkey   | NULL      |                  25.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | 0                  | 24
 NULL        | NULL      | NULL                  | NULL           |      25.0 | NULL               | NULL
 (5 rows)


presto:default> SHOW STATS FOR (SELECT * FROM nation WHERE nationkey > 10);

 column_name | data_size | distinct_values_count | nulls_fraction | row_count |     low_value      |     high_value
-------------+-----------+-----------------------+----------------+-----------+--------------------+--------------------
 regionkey   | NULL      |                   5.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | 0                  | 4
 name        | NULL      |                   9.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | IRAN               | VIETNAM
 comment     | NULL      |                  14.0 |            0.0 | NULL      |  pending excuse... | y final package...
 nationkey   | NULL      |                   3.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | 10                 | 24
 NULL        | NULL      | NULL                  | NULL           |      25.0 | NULL               | NULL
 (5 rows)

If provided SELECT will filter out all of the partitions (all table layouts), then the SHOW STATS will return no statistic which will be represented as in example below.

presto:default> SHOW STATS FOR (SELECT * FROM nation WHERE nationkey > 999);

 column_name
-------------
 NULL
(1 row)

Note, that currently providing column_list instead of * in SELECT will not influence the output table.

For example:

presto:default> SHOW STATS FOR (SELECT comment FROM nation WHERE nationkey > 10);

 column_name | data_size | distinct_values_count | nulls_fraction | row_count |     low_value      |     high_value
-------------+-----------+-----------------------+----------------+-----------+--------------------+--------------------
 regionkey   | NULL      |                   5.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | 0                  | 4
 name        | NULL      |                   9.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | IRAN               | VIETNAM
 comment     | NULL      |                  14.0 |            0.0 | NULL      |  pending excuse... | y final package...
 nationkey   | NULL      |                   3.0 |            0.0 | NULL      | 10                 | 24
 NULL        | NULL      | NULL                  | NULL           |      25.0 | NULL               | NULL
 (5 rows)

Updating Statistics For Hive Tables

For the Hive connector, Presto uses the statistics that are managed by Hive and exposed via the Hive metastore API. Depending on the Hive configuration, table statistics may not be updated automatically.

If statistics are not updated automatically, the user needs to trigger a statistics update via the Hive CLI.

The following command can be used in the Hive CLI to update table statistics for non-partitioned table t:

hive> ANALYZE TABLE t COMPUTE STATISTICS;
hive> ANALYZE TABLE t COMPUTE STATISTICS FOR COLUMNS;

For partitioned tables, partitioning information must be specified in the command. Assuming table t has two partitioning keys a and b, the following command would update the table statistics for all partitions:

hive> ANALYZE TABLE t PARTITION (a, b) COMPUTE STATISTICS FOR COLUMNS;

It is also possible to update statistics for just a subset of partitions. This command will update statistics for all partitions for which partitioning key a is equal to 1:

hive> ANALYZE TABLE t PARTITION (a=1, b) COMPUTE STATISTICS FOR COLUMNS;

And this command will update statistics for just one partition:

hive> ANALYZE TABLE t PARTITION (a=1, b=5) COMPUTE STATISTICS FOR COLUMNS;

For documentation on Hive’s statistics mechanism see https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/StatsDev