PlyQL

A SQL-like interface to plywood

Installation

PlyQL is built on top of node so make sure you have node >= 4.x.x installed.

npm install -g plyql

The global install will make the plyql command available system wide.

Usage

Currently only queries to Druid are supported. More support will come in the future.

The CLI supports the following options:

Option	Description
--help	print this help message
--version	display the version number
-v, --verbose	display the queries that are being made
-h, --host	the host to connect to
-d, --data-source	use this data source for the query (supersedes FROM clause)
-i, --interval	add (AND) a __time filter between NOW-INTERVAL and NOW
-q, --query	the query to run
-o, --output	specify the output format. Possible values: json (default), csv, tsv, flat
-a, --allow	enable a behaviour that is turned off by default eternity allow queries not filtered on time select allow select queries
-t, --timeout	the time before a query is timed out in ms (default: 60000)
-r, --retry	the number of tries a query should be attempted on error, 0 = unlimited, (default: 2)
-c, --concurrent	the limit of concurrent queries that could be made simultaneously, 0 = unlimited, (default: 2)
-fu, --force-unique	force a column to be interpreted as a hyperLogLog uniques
-fh, --force-histogram	force a column to be interpreted as an approximate histogram
--skip-cache	disable Druid caching
--introspection-strategy	Druid introspection strategy. Use --help for possible values

For information on specific functions implemented in PlyQL please see: PlyQL language reference.

Examples

For these examples a Druid broker node is located at localhost:8082 on the standard port (8080). There is a data source called twitter that has tweet meta data in it.

Here is a simple query that gets the maximum of the __time. This query displays the time of the latest event in the database.

plyql -h localhost:8082 -q "SELECT MAX(__time) AS maxTime FROM twitter"

Returns:

[
  {
    "maxTime": {
      "type": "TIME",
      "value": "2015-04-16T20:49:00.000Z"
    }
  }
]

Ok now you might want to examine the different hashtags that are trending.

You might do a GROUP BY on the first_hashtag column like this:

plyql -h localhost:8082 -q "
SELECT
first_hashtag as hashtag,
COUNT() as cnt
FROM twitter
WHERE '2015-04-15T00:00:00' <= __time AND __time < '2015-04-16T00:00:00'
GROUP BY first_hashtag
ORDER BY cnt DESC
LIMIT 5
"

This will throw an error because there is no time filter specified and the plyql guards against this.

This behaviour can be disabled using the --allow eternity flag but it is generally bad idea to do it when working with large amounts of data as it can issue computationally prohibitive queries.

Try it again, with a time filter:

plyql -h localhost:8082 -q "
SELECT
first_hashtag as hashtag,
COUNT() as cnt
FROM twitter
WHERE '2015-04-15T00:00:00' <= __time AND __time < '2015-04-16T00:00:00'
GROUP BY first_hashtag
ORDER BY cnt DESC
LIMIT 5
"

Results:

[
  {
    "cnt": 3480496,
    "hashtag": "No Hashtag"
  },
  {
    "cnt": 7691,
    "hashtag": "FOLLOWTRICK"
  },
  {
    "cnt": 6059,
    "hashtag": "5YearsSinceNiallsAudition"
  },
  {
    "cnt": 4392,
    "hashtag": "ShotsUpdateNextWeek"
  },
  {
    "cnt": 3729,
    "hashtag": "EXO"
  }
]

The plyql has an option --interval (-i) that automatically filters time on the last interval worth of time. It is useful if you do not want to type out a time filter.

plyql -h localhost:8082 -i P1D -q "
SELECT
first_hashtag as hashtag,
COUNT() as cnt
FROM twitter
GROUP BY first_hashtag
ORDER BY cnt DESC
LIMIT 5
"

To get a breakdown by time the TIME_BUCKET function can be used:

plyql -h localhost:8082 -i P1D -q "
SELECT
SUM(tweet_length) as TotalTweetLength
FROM twitter
GROUP BY TIME_BUCKET(__time, PT1H, 'Etc/UTC')
"

Returns:

[
  {
    "TotalTweetLength": 9748287,
    "split": {
      "start": "2015-04-18T15:00:00.000Z",
      "end": "2015-04-18T16:00:00.000Z",
      "type": "TIME_RANGE"
    }
  },
  {
    "TotalTweetLength": 15321726,
    "split": {
      "start": "2015-04-18T16:00:00.000Z",
      "end": "2015-04-18T17:00:00.000Z",
      "type": "TIME_RANGE"
    }
  },
  "... results omitted ..."
]

Note that the grouping column was not selected but was still returned as if TIME_BUCKET(__time, PT1H, 'Etc/UTC') as 'split' was one of the select clauses.

Time parting is also supported, here is an example:

plyql -h localhost:8082 -i P1W -q "
SELECT
TIME_PART(__time, HOUR_OF_DAY, 'Etc/UTC') as HourOfDay,
SUM(tweet_length) as TotalTweetLength
FROM twitter
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY TotalTweetLength DESC
LIMIT 3
"

Notice that this GROUP BY is referring to the first column in the select.

This returns:

[
  {
    "HourOfDay": 14,
    "TotalTweetLength": 115983429
  },
  {
    "HourOfDay": 13,
    "TotalTweetLength": 111398041
  },
  {
    "HourOfDay": 15,
    "TotalTweetLength": 106998577
  }
]

It is also possible to do multi dimensional GROUP BYs

plyql -h localhost:8082 -i P1W -q "
SELECT
TIME_BUCKET(__time, P1D, 'Etc/UTC') as Day,
verified AS Verified,
retweet AS Retweet,
SUM(statuses) as Statuses
FROM twitter
GROUP BY 1, 2, 3
ORDER BY Statuses DESC
LIMIT 3;
"

Returns:

[
  {
    "Verified": "false",
    "Retweet": "false",
    "Statuses": 98210107392,
    "Day": {
      "start": "2015-10-29T00:00:00.000Z",
      "end": "2015-10-30T00:00:00.000Z",
      "type": "TIME_RANGE"
    }
  },
  {
    "Verified": "false",
    "Retweet": "false",
    "Statuses": 97453248512,
    "Day": {
      "start": "2015-10-30T00:00:00.000Z",
      "end": "2015-10-31T00:00:00.000Z",
      "type": "TIME_RANGE"
    }
  },
  {
    "Verified": "false",
    "Retweet": "false",
    "Statuses": 97227407360,
    "Day": {
      "start": "2015-10-27T00:00:00.000Z",
      "end": "2015-10-28T00:00:00.000Z",
      "type": "TIME_RANGE"
    }
  }
]

Here is an advanced example that gets the top 5 hashtags by time. PlyQL allows us to nest queries as aggregates like so:

plyql -h localhost:8082 -i P1D -q "
SELECT
first_hashtag as hashtag,
COUNT() as cnt,
(
  SELECT
  SUM(tweet_length) as TotalTweetLength
  GROUP BY TIME_BUCKET(__time, PT1H, 'Etc/UTC')
  LIMIT 3    -- only get the first 3 hours to keep this example output small
) as 'ByTime'
FROM twitter
GROUP BY first_hashtag
ORDER BY cnt DESC
LIMIT 5
"

Returns:

[
  {
    "hashtag": "No Hashtag",
    "cnt": 3628171,
    "ByTime": [
      {
        "TotalTweetLength": 658517,
        "split": {
          "start": "2015-04-19T06:00:00.000Z",
          "end": "2015-04-19T07:00:00.000Z",
          "type": "TIME_RANGE"
        }
      },
      {
        "TotalTweetLength": 8218030,
        "split": {
          "start": "2015-04-19T07:00:00.000Z",
          "end": "2015-04-19T08:00:00.000Z",
          "type": "TIME_RANGE"
        }
      },
      {
        "TotalTweetLength": 8480978,
        "split": {
          "start": "2015-04-19T08:00:00.000Z",
          "end": "2015-04-19T09:00:00.000Z",
          "type": "TIME_RANGE"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "hashtag": "FOLLOWTRICK",
    "cnt": 11553,
    "ByTime": [
      {
        "TotalTweetLength": 5227,
        "split": {
          "start": "2015-04-19T06:00:00.000Z",
          "end": "2015-04-19T07:00:00.000Z",
          "type": "TIME_RANGE"
        }
      },
      "... results omitted ..."
    ]
  },
  "... results omitted ..."
]

Roadmap

Here is a list of features that is not currently supported that are in the works:

• Query simulation - preview the queries that will be run without running them
• Sub-queries in WHERE clauses
• JOIN support
• Window functions

Questions & Support

For updates about new and upcoming features follow @implydata on Twitter.

Please file bugs and feature requests by opening and issue on GitHub and direct all questions to our user groups.