Top-N

Function

Top-N queries ask for the N smallest or largest values ordered by columns. Both smallest and largest values sets are considered Top-N queries. Top-N queries are useful in cases where the need is to display only the N bottom-most or the N top- most records from batch/streaming table on a condition.

Syntax

SELECT [column_list]
FROM (
   SELECT [column_list],
     ROW_NUMBER() OVER ([PARTITION BY col1[, col2...]]
       ORDER BY col1 [asc|desc][, col2 [asc|desc]...]) AS rownum
   FROM table_name)
WHERE rownum <= N [AND conditions]

Description

• ROW_NUMBER(): Allocate a unique and consecutive number to each line starting from the first line in the current partition. Currently, we only support ROW_NUMBER as the over window function. In the future, we will support RANK() and DENSE_RANK().
• PARTITION BY col1[, col2...]: Specifies the partition columns. Each partition will have a Top-N result.
• ORDER BY col1 [asc|desc][, col2 [asc|desc]...]: Specifies the ordering columns. The ordering directions can be different on different columns.
• WHERE rownum <= N: The rownum <= N is required for Flink to recognize this query is a Top-N query. The N represents the N smallest or largest records will be retained.
• [AND conditions]: It is free to add other conditions in the where clause, but the other conditions can only be combined with rownum <= N using AND conjunction.

Important Notes

• The TopN query is Result Updating.
• Flink SQL will sort the input data stream according to the order key,
• so if the top N records have been changed, the changed ones will be sent as retraction/update records to downstream.
• If the top N records need to be stored in external storage, the result table should have the same unique key with the Top-N query.

Example

This is an example to get the top five products per category that have the maximum sales in realtime.

SELECT * 
  FROM ( 
     SELECT *,
         ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY category ORDER BY sales DESC) as row_num
     FROM ShopSales)
  WHERE row_num <= 5;