techdocsmith commented on code in PR #16515: URL: https://github.com/apache/druid/pull/16515#discussion_r1626292541
########## docs/tutorials/tutorial-latest-by.md: ########## @@ -0,0 +1,225 @@ +--- +id: tutorial-latest-by +title: Query for latest values +sidebar_label: Query for latest and deduplicated data +description: How to use LATEST_BY or deltas for up-to-date values +--- + +<!-- + ~ Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one + ~ or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file + ~ distributed with this work for additional information + ~ regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file + ~ to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the + ~ "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance + ~ with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at + ~ + ~ http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 + ~ + ~ Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, + ~ software distributed under the License is distributed on an + ~ "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY + ~ KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the + ~ specific language governing permissions and limitations + ~ under the License. + --> + +This tutorial describes strategies in Apache Druid for use cases that might be handled by UPSERT in other databases. You can use the LATEST_BY aggregation at query time or "deltas" for numeric dimensions at insert time. + +The [Update data](./tutorial-update-data.md) tutorial demonstrates how to use batch operations to updadate data according to the timestamp, including UPSERT cases. However, with streaming data, you can potentially use LATEST_BY or deltas to satisfy requirements otherwise handled with updates. + +## Prerequisites + +Before you follow the steps in this tutorial, download Druid as described in the [Local quickstart](index.md) and have it running on your local machine. You don't need to load any data into the Druid cluster. + +You should be familiar with data querying in Druid. If you haven't already, go through the [Query data](../tutorials/tutorial-query.md) tutorial first. + +## Use LATEST_BY to retrieve updated values + +Sometimes you want to read the latest value of one dimension or measure as it relates to another dimension. In a transactional database, you might maintain dimension or measure using UPSERT, but in Druid you can append all updates or changes during ingestion. The LATEST_BY function lets you get the most recent value for the dimension with the following type of query: + +```sql +SELECT dimension, + LATEST_BY(changed_dimension, update_timestamp) +FROM my_table +GROUP BY 1 +``` + +For example, consider the following table of events that log the total number of points over for a user: + +| `__time` | `user_id`| `total_points`| +| --- | --- | --- | +| `2024-01-01T01:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 10 | +| `2024-01-01T01:05:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 30 | +| `2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 35 | +| `2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`| 30 | +| `2024-01-01T02:05:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`| 55 | +| `2024-01-01T03:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 40 | + +<details> +<summary>Insert sample data</summary> + +```sql +REPLACE INTO "latest_by_tutorial1" OVERWRITE ALL +WITH "ext" AS ( + SELECT * + FROM TABLE( + EXTERN( + '{"type":"inline","data":"{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T01:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":10}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T01:05:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":30}\n{\"timestamp\": \"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":35}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"silly_monkey2\", \"points\":30}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:05:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"silly_monkey2\", \"points\":55}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T03:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":40}"}', + '{"type":"json"}' + ) + ) EXTEND ("timestamp" VARCHAR, "user_id" VARCHAR, "points" BIGINT) +) +SELECT + TIME_PARSE("timestamp") AS "__time", + "user_id", + "points" +FROM "ext" +PARTITIONED BY DAY +``` +</details> + +The following query gives us most recent `points` value for each `user_id`: + +```sql +SELECT user_id, + LATEST_BY("points", "__time") AS latest_points +FROM latest_by_tutorial1 +GROUP BY 1 +``` + +Returns + +| `user_id`| `total_points`| +| --- | --- | +|`silly_monkey2`| 55 | +|`funny_bunny1`| 40 | + +In the example, the values increase each time, but this method works even if the values fluctuate up and down. + +You can use this query shape as a subquery to do additional processing. However, if there a lot of values for `user_id`, the query can be expensive. + +If your want the to track the latest value for different times within a larger time frame, you need an additional timestamp to record update times so Druid can track the latest version. Consider the following data that represents points for various users updated within an hour time frame: + +| `__time` | `update_time` | `user_id`| `total_points`| +| --- | --- | --- | --- | +| `2024-01-01T01:00:00.000Z`| `2024-01-01T01:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 10 | +|`2024-01-01T01:00:00.000Z`| `2024-01-01T01:05:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 30 | +|`2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`| `2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 35 | +|`2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`| 30 | +|`2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`| `2024-01-01T02:05:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`| 55 | +|`2024-01-01T03:00:00.000Z`| `2024-01-01T03:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 40 | + +<details> +<summary>Insert sample data</summary> + +```sql +REPLACE INTO "latest_by_tutorial2" OVERWRITE ALL +WITH "ext" AS ( + SELECT * + FROM TABLE( + EXTERN( + '{"type":"inline","data":"{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T01:00:00Z\",\"updated_timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T01:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":10}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T01:05:00Z\",\"updated_timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T01:05:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":30}\n{\"timestamp\": \"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"updated_timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":35}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"updated_timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"silly_monkey2\", \"points\":30}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:00:00Z\",\"updated_timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T02:05:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"silly_monkey2\", \"points\":55}\n{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T03:00:00Z\",\"updated_timestamp\":\"2024-01-01T03:00:00Z\",\"user_id\":\"funny_bunny1\", \"points\":40}"}', + '{"type":"json"}' + ) + ) EXTEND ("timestamp" VARCHAR, "updated_timestamp" VARCHAR, "user_id" VARCHAR, "points" BIGINT) +) +SELECT + TIME_PARSE("timestamp") AS "__time", + "updated_timestamp", + "user_id", + "points" +FROM "ext" +PARTITIONED BY DAY +``` +</details> + + +The following query demonstrates how to query for the latest points value by user for each hour: + +```sql +SELECT FLOOR("__time" TO HOUR) AS "hour_time", + "user_id", + LATEST_BY("points", TIME_PARSE(updated_timestamp)) AS "latest_points_hour" +FROM latest_by_tutorial2 +GROUP BY 1,2 +``` + +The results are as follows: + +| `hour_time` | `user_id` | `latest_points_hour`| +|---|---|---| +|`2024-01-01T01:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`|20| +|`2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`|5| +|`2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`|25| +|`2024-01-01T03:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`|10| + +LATEST_BY() is an aggregation function. While it's very efficient if there are not a lot of update rows matching the dimension (e.g. "user_id"), it does scan all matching rows with the same dimension. This means, for any permutation of dimensions where there are a lot of updates (e.g. the user has played the game a million times), and a lot of the updates are not coming in timely order, Druid will be forced to process all rows matching the user_id to find the row with max timestamp to give you the latest data. + +You can think about this where if updates constitute 1-5% of your data, you'll get good query performance, if updates constitute 50%+ of your data, your queries will be slow. + +To mitigate this, you can set up a periodic batch ingestion job that reindexes modified data into a new datasource for direct querying without grouping to reduce for the cost of these kinds of queries by essentially pre-computing the latest value and store them. Though your view of latest data will not be up to date until the next refresh happens. + +Alternatively, you can perform ingestion-time aggregation using LATEST_BY and append updates with streaming ingestion into a rolled up datasource. Appending into a time chunk adds new segments and does not perfectly roll up data, so rows may be partial rather than complete rollups, and you may have multiple partially rolled up rows. In this case you still need to use GROUP BY query for correct querying of the rolled-up data source, you can tune automatic compaction right to significantly reduce the number of stale rows and improve your performance + +## Use delta values and aggregation for updated values + +Instead of appending the latest total value in your events, you could log the change in value with each event and use the aggregator you usually use. This method may allow you to avoid a level of aggregation and grouping in your queries. + +Typically, for most applications, all you need to do is to send the event data directly to Druid without pre-processing. For example, when you are sending impression count to Druid, don't send the total impression count since yesterday, send just the recent impression count to Druid. And you can aggregate the total in Druid during query. Druid is very fast on adding up a lot of rows, so this might be counterintuitive to people who are familiar with batching or pre-aggregating data. + +For example, consider a datasource with a measure column `y` that you aggregate with SUM, grouped by by another dimension `x`. If you want to update the value of `y` for `x` from 3 to 2, then insert -1 for `y`. This way the aggregation SUM(`y`) is correct for any queries grouped by `x`. This may offer a significant performance advantage but the trade off is that the aggregation has to always be a SUM. + +In other cases, the updates to the data may already be deltas to the original, and so the data engineering required to append the updates would be simple. Just as before, the same mitigations as the previous case apply to improve performance with automatic compaction and rollup at ingestion time. + +For example, consider the following table of events that log the change in point total for a user: + +| `__time` | `user_id`| `delta`| +| --- | --- | --- | +| `2024-01-01T01:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 10 | +| `2024-01-01T01:05:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 10 | +| `2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 5 | +| `2024-01-01T02:00:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`| 30 | +| `2024-01-01T02:05:00.000Z`|`silly_monkey2`| -5 | +| `2024-01-01T03:00:00.000Z`|`funny_bunny1`| 10 | + Review Comment: all of these queries just insert the sample data from the table preceding the query -- This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service. To respond to the message, please log on to GitHub and use the URL above to go to the specific comment. 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