You might recall (from my last post) that query plans containing a row goal tend to favour nested loops or merge join over hashing. This is because a hash join has to fully process its build input (to populate its hash table) before it can start probing for matches from its second input. Hash join therefore has a high start-up cost, which is balanced by a lower per-row cost once probing begins. In this post, I’ll take a look at how row goals affect grouping operations.
Grouping Strategies
While the start-up cost of hash join often makes it unsuitable for plans with a row goal, there are times when hashing operations may feature in such plans, since the Hash Match iterator also supports a streaming mode.
As an example, say we are asked to list one hundred unique first names from the AdventureWorks Contacts table:
Read More...