We Keep Coding

Processing large amount of data from PostgreSQL

I am looking for a way how to process a large amount of data that are loaded from the database in a reasonable time.
The problem I am facing is that I have to read all the data from the database (currently around 30M of rows) and then process them in Java. The processing itself is not the problem but fetching the data from the database is. The fetching generally takes from 1-2 minutes. However, I need it to be much faster than that. I am loading the data from db straight to DTO using following query:
select id, id_post, id_comment, col_a, col_b from post_comment
Where id is primary key, id_post and id_comment are foreign keys to respective tables and col_a and col_b are columns of small int data types. The columns with foreign keys have indexes.
The tools I am using for the job currently are Java, Spring Boot, Hibernate and PostgreSQL.
So far the only options that came to my mind were
Ditch hibernate for this query and try to use plain jdbc connection hoping that it will be faster.
Completely rewrite the processing algorithm from Java to SQL procedure.
Did I miss something or these are my only options? I am open to any ideas.
Note that I only need to read the data, not change them in any way.
EDIT: The explain analyze of the used query
"Seq Scan on post_comment (cost=0.00..397818.16 rows=21809216 width=28) (actual time=0.044..6287.066 rows=21812469 loops=1), Planning Time: 0.124 ms, Execution Time: 8237.090 ms"

Do you need to process all rows at once, or can you process them one at a time?
If you can process them one at a time, you should try using a scrollable result set.
org.hibernate.Query query = ...;
query.setReadOnly(true);
ScrollableResults sr = query.scroll(ScrollMode.FORWARD_ONLY);
while(sr.next())
{
MyClass myObject = (MyClass)sr.get()[0];
... process row for myObject ...
}
This will still remember every object in the entity manager, and so will get progressively slower and slower. To avoid that issue, you might detach the object from the entity manager after you're done. This can only be done if the objects are not modified. If they are modified, the changes will NOT be persisted.
org.hibernate.Query query = ...;
query.setReadOnly(true);
ScrollableResults sr = query.scroll(ScrollMode.FORWARD_ONLY);
while(sr.next())
{
MyClass myObject = (MyClass)sr.get()[0];
... process row for myObject ...
entityManager.detach(myObject);
}

If I was in your shoes I would definitely bypass hibernate and go directly to JDBC for this query. Hibernate is not made for dealing with large result sets, and it represents an additional overhead for benefits that are not applicable to cases like this one.
When you use JDBC, do not forget to set autocommit to false and set some large fetch size (of the order of thousands) or else postgres will first fetch all 21 million rows into memory before starting to yield them to you. (See https://stackoverflow.com/a/10959288/773113)

Since you asked for ideas, I have seen this problem being resolved in below options depending on how it fits in your environment:
1) First try with JDBC and Java, simple code and you can do a test run on your database and data to see if this improvement is enough. You will here need to compromise on the other benefits of Hibernate.
2) In point 1, use Multi-threading with multiple connections pulling data to one queue and then you can use that queue to process further or print as you need. you may consider Kafka also.
3) If data is going to further keep on increasing you can consider Spark as the latest technology which can make it all in memory and will be much more faster.
These are some of the options, please like if these ideas help you anywhere.

Why do you 30M keep in memory ??
it's better to rewrite it to pure sql and use pagination based on id
you will be sent 5 as the id of the last comment and you will issue
select id, id_post, id_comment, col_a, col_b from post_comment where id > 5 limit 20
if you need to update the entire table then you need to put the task in the cron but also there to process it in parts
the memory of the road and downloading 30M is very expensive - you need to process parts 0-20 20-n n+20

Spring JDBC Limit Query Length

I am executing a custom built DML statement using the
namedParameterJdbcTemplate.update(sql, valueMap);
call, where the sql is built based on the values in the map. Here my map could get very large and thus the sql might also get very lengthy. I understand that in Oracle, there is no fixed number for how long a query can be and there are many factors including the database configuration that may affect this value, but I would like to limit the query length to a fixed number.
What is the best way to limit the query length? Would the spring-batch API be any useful here?
Thanks in advance for any pointers.

I would choose one of these approaches:
Temporary table - Insert data in batch to the temporary table and then use MERGE INTO statement with that table.
Create SQL type for your rows and bind just that one parameter. (google for OraData - it is a bit tricky but it works)
Both will enable you to have a small static query and therefore avoid potential problems with too large query (and its parsing, polluting library cache etc.).

How to handle efficient database connection and performance in java?

I have 5000 records as search result and based on product number have to pull the related data associated with product number.that means seperate the 5000 product number and sending to database to pull the data.Creating one query and hiting the database for each product number is not efficient.
I'm looking for some idea to handle this situation.
Note:using hibernate and oracle and java

You got that search result with some query, it might be simpler to reuse that query with a join to retrieve the related data.

Instead of 5000 queries to get the result, you may use the IN clause.
You should probably split it in chunks, however, since such long SQL queries can throw errors, or use a temporary table and do a JOIN. Take a look at this.

maybe you could use a Materialized View and some basic paging? http://docs.oracle.com/cd/A97630_01/server.920/a96567/repmview.htm

Best way to sort the data : DB Query or in Application Code

I have a Mysql table with some data (> million rows). I have a requirement to sort the data based on the below criteria
1) Newest
2) Oldest
3) top rated
4) least rated
What is the recommended solution to develop the sort functionality
1) For every sort reuest execute a DBQuery with required joins and orderBy conditions and return the sorted data
2) Get all the data (un sorted) from table, put the data in cache. Write custom comparators (java) to sort the data.
I am leaning towards #2 as the load on DB is only once. Moreover, application code is better than DBQuery.
Please share your thoughts....
Thanks,
Karthik

Do as much in the database as you can. Note that if you have 1,000,000 rows, returning all million is nearly useless. Are you going to display this on a web site? I think not. Do you really care about the 500,000th least popular post? Again, I think not.
So do the sorts in the database and return the top 100, 500, or 1000 rows.

It's much faster to do it in the database:
1) the database is optimized for I/O operations, and can use indices, and other DB optimizations to improve the response time
2) taking the data from the database to the application will get all data into memory. The app will have to look all the data to redorder it without optimized algorithms
3) the database only takes the minimun necessary data into mamemory, which can be much less than all the data whihc has to be moved to java
4) you can always create extra indices on the database to improve the query performance.

I would say that operation on DB will be always faster. You should ensure that caching on DB is ON and working properly. Ensure that you are not using now() in your query because it will disable mysql cache. Take a look here how mysql query cache works. In basic. Query is cached based on string so if query string differs every time you fetch no cache is used.

AFAIK usually it should run faster if you let the DB sort your data.
And regarding code on application level vs db level I would agree in the case of stored procedures but sorting in SELECTs is fine IMHO.
If you want to show the data to the user also consider paging (in which case you're better off with sorting on the db level anyway).

Fetching a million rows from the database sounds like a terrible idea. It will generate a lot of networking traffic and require quite some time to transfer all the data. Not mentioning amounts of memory you would need to allocate in your application for storing million of objects.
So if you can fetch only a subset with a query, do that. Overall, do as much filtering as you can in the database.
And I do not see any problem in ordering in a single queue. You can always use UNION if you can't do it as one SELECT.

You do not have four tasks, you have two:
sort newest IS EQUAL TO sort oldest
AND
sort top rated IS EQUAL TO sort least rated.
So you need to make two calls to db. Yes sort in db. then instead of calling to sort every time, do this:
1] track the timestamp of the latest record in the db
2] before calling to sort and retrieve entire list, check if date has changed
3] if date has not changed, use the list you have in memory
4] if date has changed, update the list

I know this is an old thread, but it comes up in my search, so I'd like to post my opinion.
I'm a bit old school, but for that many rows, I would consider dumping the data from your database (each RDBMS has it's own method. Looks like MySQLDump command for MySQL: Link )
You can then process this with sorting algorithms or tools that are available in your java libraries or operating system.
Be careful about the work your asking your database to do. Remember that it has to be available to service other requests. Don't "bring it to it's knees" servicing only one request, unless it's a nightly batch cycle type of scenario and you're certain it won't be asked to do anything else.

Does using Limit in query using JDBC, have any effect in performance?

If we use the Limit clause in a query which also has ORDER BY clause and execute the query in JDBC, will there be any effect in performance? (using MySQL database)
Example:
SELECT modelName from Cars ORDER BY manuDate DESC Limit 1
I read in one of the threads in this forum that, by default a set size is fetched at a time. How can I find the default fetch size?
I want only one record. Originally, I was using as follows:
SQL Query:
SELECT modelName from Cars ORDER BY manuDate DESC
In the JAVA code, I was extracting as follows:
if(resultSett.next()){
//do something here.
}

Definitely the LIMIT 1 will have a positive effect on the performance. Instead of the entire (well, depends on default fetch size) data set of mathes being returned from the DB server to the Java code, only one row will be returned. This saves a lot of network bandwidth and Java memory usage.
Always delegate as much as possible constraints like LIMIT, ORDER, WHERE, etc to the SQL language instead of doing it in the Java side. The DB will do it much better than your Java code can ever do (if the table is properly indexed, of course). You should try to write the SQL query as much as possibe that it returns exactly the information you need.
Only disadvantage of writing DB-specific SQL queries is that the SQL language is not entirely portable among different DB servers, which would require you to change the SQL queries everytime when you change of DB server. But it's in real world very rare anyway to switch to a completely different DB make. Externalizing SQL strings to XML or properties files should help a lot anyway.

There are two ways the LIMIT could speed things up:
by producing less data, which means less data gets sent over the wire and processed by the JDBC client
by potentially having MySQL itself look at fewer rows
The second one of those depends on how MySQL can produce the ordering. If you don't have an index on manuDate, MySQL will have to fetch all the rows from Cars, then order them, then give you the first one. But if there's an index on manuDate, MySQL can just look at the first entry in that index, fetch the appropriate row, and that's it. (If the index also contains modelName, MySQL doesn't even need to fetch the row after it looks at the index -- it's a covering index.)
With all that said, watch out! If manuDate isn't unique, the ordering is only partially deterministic (the order for all rows with the same manuDate is undefined), and your LIMIT 1 therefore doesn't have a single correct answer. For instance, if you switch storage engines, you might start getting different results.