---
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
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 %}

Document DISTRIBUTE BY Clause of SELECT statement in SQL Reference
[SPARK-30589][DOC] Document DISTRIBUTE BY Clause of SELECT statement in SQL Reference

### What changes were proposed in this pull request?
Document DISTRIBUTE BY clause of SELECT statement in SQL Reference Guide.

### Why are the changes needed?
Currently Spark lacks documentation on the supported SQL constructs causing
confusion among users who sometimes have to look at the code to understand the
usage. This is aimed at addressing this issue.

### Does this PR introduce any user-facing change?
Yes.

**Before:**
There was no documentation for this.

**After.**
<img width="972" alt="Screen Shot 2020-01-20 at 3 08 24 PM" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/14225158/72763045-c08fbc80-3b96-11ea-8fb6-023cba5eb96a.png">
<img width="972" alt="Screen Shot 2020-01-20 at 3 08 34 PM" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/14225158/72763047-c38aad00-3b96-11ea-80d8-cd3d2d4257c8.png">

### How was this patch tested?
Tested using jykyll build --serve

Closes #27298 from dilipbiswal/sql-ref-select-distributeby.

Authored-by: Dilip Biswal <1849a9a0cb02515c3e59cb65a673e821c0e87609@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Sean Owen <d519fa33a62684a61ab04b24d26f83452d51b34c@gmail.com>
