Abstract:
According to one aspect of the invention, for a database statement that specifies evaluating ranking or cumulative window functions, an execution strategy based on an extended data distribution key may be used for the database statement. In the execution strategy, each sort operator of multiple parallel processing sort operators computes locally evaluated results of a ranking or cumulative window function based on a subset of rows in all rows used to evaluate the database statement, and sends the first and last rows' locally evaluated results to a query coordinator. The query coordinator consolidates the locally evaluated results received from the multiple parallel processing sort operators and sends consolidated results to the sort operators based on their respective demographics. Each sort operator completes full evaluation of the ranking or cumulative window functions based at least in part on one or more of the consolidated results provided by the query coordinator.