Categories:

Aggregate Functions (Cardinality Estimation) , Window Functions

# HLL_ACCUMULATE¶

Returns the HyperLogLog state at the end of aggregation.

HLL discards its intermediate state when the final cardinality estimate is returned. In advanced use cases, such as incremental cardinality estimation during bulk loading, one may want to keep the intermediate state. The intermediate state can later be combined (merged) with other intermediate states, or can be exported to external tools.

In contrast to HLL, HLL_ACCUMULATE does not return a cardinality estimate. Instead, it skips the final estimation step and returns the algorithm state itself. The state is a binary of at most 4096 Bytes. For more information, see Estimating Number of Distinct Values.

## Syntax¶

HLL_ACCUMULATE( [ DISTINCT ] <expr> )

HLL_ACCUMULATE(*)


## Arguments¶

expr

The expression for which you want to estimate cardinality (number of distinct values). This is typically a column name, but can be a more general expression.

## Usage Notes¶

• DISTINCT can be included as an argument, but has no effect.

## Examples¶

This shows one step towards estimating the number of distinct postal codes in province(s) of Canada. In this step, we calculate the approximate number of distinct postal codes in Manitoba and store an internal representation of the “state” of the calculation, which we can later combine with similar information for other provinces:

CREATE TABLE temporary_hll_state_for_manitoba AS
SELECT HLL_ACCUMULATE(postal_code) as h_a_p_c
FROM postal_data
WHERE province = 'Manitoba'
;


Here is another example. This example shows how to use the three related functions HLL_ACCUMULATE, HLL_ESTIMATE, and HLL_COMBINE.

Create a simple table and data:

-- Create a sequence to use to generate values for the table.
CREATE OR REPLACE SEQUENCE seq92;
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE sequence_demo (c1 INTEGER DEFAULT seq92.nextval, dummy SMALLINT);
INSERT INTO sequence_demo (dummy) VALUES (0);

-- Double the number of rows a few times, until there are 8 rows:
INSERT INTO sequence_demo (dummy) SELECT dummy FROM sequence_demo;
INSERT INTO sequence_demo (dummy) SELECT dummy FROM sequence_demo;
INSERT INTO sequence_demo (dummy) SELECT dummy FROM sequence_demo;


Create a table that contains the “state” that represents the current approximate cardinality information for the table named sequence_demo:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE resultstate1 AS (
SELECT hll_accumulate(c1) AS rs1
FROM sequence_demo);


Now create a second table and add data. (In a more realistic situation, the user could have loaded more data into the first table and divided the data into non-overlapping sets based on the time that the data was loaded.)

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE test_table2 (c1 INTEGER);
-- Insert data.
INSERT INTO test_table2 (c1) SELECT c1 + 4 FROM sequence_demo;


Get the “state” information for just the new data.

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE resultstate2 AS
(SELECT hll_accumulate(c1) AS rs1
FROM test_table2);


Combine the “state” information for the two batches of rows:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE combined_resultstate (c1) AS
SELECT hll_combine(rs1) AS apc1
FROM (
SELECT rs1 FROM resultstate1
UNION ALL
SELECT rs1 FROM resultstate2
)
;


Get the approximate cardinality of the combined set of rows:

SELECT hll_estimate(c1) FROM combined_resultstate;


Output:

+------------------+
| HLL_ESTIMATE(C1) |
|------------------|
|               12 |
+------------------+