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hint in Phoenix query to force use a global index is not working on a simple HBase table - need to find out why

avatar
Explorer

Hello Hortonworks Community,

I am a novice Phoenix user and this is my first post to the Hortonworks Community group. I have what I hope is a simple question: my global index is being ignored, even after I add a Hint, and I want to know why.

We are using Phoenix 4.7 in the Hortonworks distribution. I have created a fairly simple Pboenix (HBase) table of about 8 million rows, and about 15 columns, with several fields having global indexes. I created the main table (variantjoin_rtsalted24) and its indexes, and then used a bulk loader to populate them from a tab-delimited file. That appeared to work fine.

chrom_int is one field on which there is a global index, named vj2_chrom_int. And you can see the index being automatically being used below, where it is the only field being returned. Time required is 0.124 sec.

0: jdbc:phoenix:> SELECT VJ.chrom_int FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;

+------------+

| CHROM_INT |

+------------+

| 18 |

| 18 |

| 18 |

| 18 |

| 18 |

+------------+

5 rows selected (0.124 seconds)

0: jdbc:phoenix:>

You can see that the vj2_chrom_int index is automatically being used, as I understand things, by the "RANGE SCAN" wording and "[0,1" in the explain plan:

0: jdbc:phoenix:> explain SELECT VJ.chrom_int FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| PLAN |

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| CLIENT 24-CHUNK SERIAL 24-WAY ROUND ROBIN RANGE SCAN OVER VJ2_CHROM_INT [0,1 |

| SERVER FILTER BY FIRST KEY ONLY |

| SERVER 5 ROW LIMIT |

| CLIENT 5 ROW LIMIT |

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

4 rows selected (0.043 seconds)

0: jdbc:phoenix:>


I can use a Hint to tell Phoenix to NOT use this index, as seen below. And that increases the time needed to 1.97 sec, over an order of magnitude more time than the 0.124 sec required with index use.

0: jdbc:phoenix:> SELECT /*+ NO_INDEX */ VJ.chrom_int FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;

+------------+

| CHROM_INT |

+------------+

| 18 |

| 18 |

| 18 |

| 18 |

| 18 |

+------------+

5 rows selected (1.977 seconds)

0: jdbc:phoenix:>

And here is the explain plan for that:


0: jdbc:phoenix:> explain SELECT /*+ NO_INDEX */ VJ.chrom_int FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| PLAN |

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| CLIENT 72-CHUNK 14325202 ROWS 15099524157 BYTES PARALLEL 24-WAY ROUND ROBIN |

| SERVER FILTER BY CHROM_INT = 18 |

| SERVER 5 ROW LIMIT |

| CLIENT 5 ROW LIMIT |

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

4 rows selected (0.009 seconds)

Now, I want to add other fields for retrieval. For example, "genomic_range". The Phoenix documentation says in such a case I must add a Hint to force Phoenix to make use of the index (since it is a simple global index, not a covered index wherein genomic_range has been added). So I tried that. See below. Alas, the response time is about the same as what I get with NO_INDEX. It appears that, even with the Hint, the index is not being used.

0: jdbc:phoenix:> SELECT/*+ INDEX(VJ jv2_chrom_int) */ VJ.chrom_int, genomic_range FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;
+------------+----------------------+
| CHROM_INT | GENOMIC_RANGE |
+------------+----------------------+
| 18 | [49546,49547) |
| 18 | [20003625,20003626) |
| 18 | [19618749,19618752) |
| 18 | [47561,47583) |
| 18 | [20024261,20024272) |
+------------+----------------------+
5 rows selected (1.799 seconds)
0: jdbc:phoenix:>


And below is the explain plan for the query with the index failure. No indication of index use, that I can tell.

0: jdbc:phoenix:> explain SELECT/*+ INDEX(VJ jv2_chrom_int) */ VJ.chrom_int, genomic_range FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| PLAN |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| CLIENT 72-CHUNK 14325202 ROWS 15099524157 BYTES PARALLEL 24-WAY ROUND ROBIN |
| SERVER FILTER BY CHROM_INT = 18 |
| SERVER 5 ROW LIMIT |
| CLIENT 5 ROW LIMIT |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
4 rows selected (0.042 seconds)
0: jdbc:phoenix:>

So I am puzzled and frustrated. How do I get my index Hint to work? The difference in timing between automatic use (when the index is the only field being retrieved) and when NO_INDEX is used tells me that the index table is there and can indeed be used. But something is going wrong when I try to force its use via a Hint. Guidance would be very much appreciated on this basic point.

- Ron Taylor

2 REPLIES 2

avatar
Expert Contributor

There are two parameters which you should pass in INDEX hint function (Table and index table name)

INDEX(my_table my_index)

Example:

SELECT /*+ INDEX(my_table my_index) */ v2 FROM my_table WHERE v1 = 'foo'

Ref - https://phoenix.apache.org/secondary_indexing.html

avatar
Expert Contributor

Can you try below :

explain SELECT/+ INDEX(VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 jv2_chrom_int) / VJ.chrom_int, genomic_range FROM VARIANTJOIN_RTSALTED24 as VJ WHERE (chrom_int =18 ) limit 5;