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84 changes: 84 additions & 0 deletions docs/sql-ref-syntax-qry-select-distribute-by.md
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---
layout: global
title: DISTRIBUTE BY Clause
displayTitle: DISTRIBUTE BY Clause
license: |
Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
(the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
---
The <code>DISTRIBUTE BY</code> clause is used to repartition the data based
on the input expressions. Unlike the `CLUSTER BY` clause, this does not
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link to CLUSTER BY?

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@huaxingao will do it in the finalization pr when the links are available.

sort the data within each partition.

### Syntax
{% highlight sql %}
DISTRIBUTE BY { expression [ , ... ] }
{% endhighlight %}

### Parameters
<dl>
<dt><code><em>expression</em></code></dt>
<dd>
Specifies combination of one or more values, operators and SQL functions that results in a value.
</dd>
</dl>

### Examples
{% highlight sql %}
CREATE TABLE person (name STRING, age INT);
INSERT INTO person VALUES
('Zen Hui', 25),
('Anil B', 18),
('Shone S', 16),
('Mike A', 25),
('John A', 18),
('Jack N', 16);

-- Reduce the number of shuffle partitions to 2 to illustrate the behavior of `DISTRIBUTE BY`.
-- It's easier to see the clustering and sorting behavior with less number of partitions.
SET spark.sql.shuffle.partitions = 2;

-- Select the rows with no ordering. Please note that without any sort directive, the result
-- of the query is not deterministic. It's included here to just contrast it with the
-- behavior of `DISTRIBUTE BY`. The query below produces rows where age columns are not
-- clustered together.
SELECT age, name FROM person;

+---+-------+
|age|name |
+---+-------+
|16 |Shone S|
|25 |Zen Hui|
|16 |Jack N |
|25 |Mike A |
|18 |John A |
|18 |Anil B |
+---+-------+

-- Produces rows clustered by age. Persons with same age are clustered together.
-- Unlike `CLUSTER BY` clause, the rows are not sorted within a partition.
SELECT age, name FROM person DISTRIBUTE BY age;

+---+-------+
|age|name |
+---+-------+
|25 |Zen Hui|
|25 |Mike A |
|18 |John A |
|18 |Anil B |
|16 |Shone S|
|16 |Jack N |
+---+-------+
{% endhighlight %}