Understanding the query lifecycle in Amazon Redshift
Ethan Stark, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
June 2024 (document history)
Overview
You can use Amazon Redshift to query petabytes of structured and semi-structured data across your data warehouse and your data lake by using standard SQL. A deeper understanding of the SQL query lifecycle can help you optimize your SQL queries and get more out of Amazon Redshift. This guide provides you with an overview of the SQL query lifecycle that explains the following:
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How the core architecture components of an Amazon Redshift data warehouse work
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How query processing works
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How to develop a query plan and use the
EXPLAINstatement -
How to use system tables and views
You can use what you learn in this guide to design or use more efficient and effective queries in Amazon Redshift.
Intended audience
This guide is intended for data engineers, data architects, and data analysts who design or use queries in Amazon Redshift.
Objectives
This guide can help you and your organization achieve the following objectives:
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Develop an efficient and effective query plan
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Learn to use the
EXPLAINstatement to maximize the effectiveness of your queries -
Optimize the performance of queries in Amazon Redshift
