A Parallel Sort Merge Join Algorithm for Managing Data Skew

  • Authors:
  • J. L. Wolf;D. M. Dias;P. S. Yu

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
  • Year:
  • 1993

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.01

Visualization

Abstract

A parallel sort-merge-join algorithm which uses a divide-and-conquer approach to address the data skew problem is proposed. The proposed algorithm adds an extra, low-cost scheduling phase to the usual sort, transfer, and join phases. During the schedulingphase, a parallelizable optimization algorithm, using the output of the sort phase,attempts to balance the load across the multiple processors in the subsequent joinphase. The algorithm naturally identifies the largest skew elements, and assigns each ofthem to an optimal number of processors. Assuming a Zipf-like distribution of data skew,the algorithm is demonstrated to achieve very good load balancing for the join phase, andis shown to be very robust relative, among other things, to the degree of data skew andthe total number of processors.