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Optimize your queries

Use the suggestions in this section for optimizing your SQL queries in Athena.

Use LIMIT with the ORDER BY clause

The ORDER BY clause returns data in a sorted order. This requires Athena to send all rows of data to a single worker node and then sort the rows. This type of query can run for a long time or even fail.

For greater efficiency in your queries, look at the top or bottom N values, and then also use a LIMIT clause. This significantly reduces the cost of the sort by pushing both sorting and limiting to individual worker nodes rather than to a single worker.

Optimize JOIN clauses

When you join two tables, Athena distributes the table on the right to worker nodes, and then streams the table on the left to perform the join.

For this reason, specify the larger table on the left side of the join and the smaller table on the right side of the join. This way, Athena uses less memory and runs the query with lower latency.

Also note the following points:

Optimize GROUP BY clauses

The GROUP BY operator distributes rows based on the GROUP BY columns to the worker nodes. These columns are referenced in memory and the values are compared as the rows are ingested. The values are aggregated together when the GROUP BY column matches. In consideration of the way this process works, it is advisable to order the columns from the highest cardinality to the lowest.

Use numbers instead of strings

Because numbers require less memory and are faster to process compared to strings, use numbers instead of strings when possible.

Limit the number of columns

To reduce the total amount of memory required to store your data, limit the number of columns specified in your SELECT statement.

Use regular expressions instead of LIKE

Queries that include clauses such as LIKE '%string%' on large strings can be very computationally intensive. When you filter for multiple values on a string column, use the regexp_like() function and a regular expression instead. This is particularly useful when you compare a long list of values.

Use the LIMIT clause

Instead of selecting all columns when you run a query, use the LIMIT clause to return only the columns that you require. This reduces the size of the dataset that is processed through the query execution pipeline. LIMIT clauses are more helpful when you query tables that have a large of number of columns that are string-based. LIMIT clauses are also helpful when you perform multiple joins or aggregations on any query.