Adaptive Parallel Aggregation Algorithms

Abstract

Aggregation and duplicate removal are common in SQL queries. However, in the parallel query processing literature, aggregate processing has received surprisingly little attention; furthermore, for each of the traditional parallel aggregation algorithms, there is a range of grouping selectivities where the algorithm performs poorly. In this work, we propose new algorithms that dynamically adapt, at query evaluation time, in response to observed grouping selectiv-ities. Performance analysis via analytical modeling and an implementation on a workstation-cluster shows that the proposed algorithms are able to perform well for all grouping selectivities. Finally, we study the effect of data skew and show that for certain data sets the proposed algorithms can even outperform the best of traditional approaches. © 1995, ACM. All rights reserved.