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Does ClickHouse Use PRIMARY KEY for Ordering When ORDER BY Is Not Defined?

Blog post from Propel Data

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Propel Team
Word Count
521
Language
English
Hacker News Points
-
Summary

In ClickHouse, the primary key serves as the default ordering mechanism when an ORDER BY clause is not explicitly defined during table creation. The primary key always acts as a prefix of the ORDER BY key, which determines how data is stored on disk for efficient read and aggregation operations. Understanding this relationship between PRIMARY KEY and ORDER BY is crucial for designing efficient ClickHouse tables, as it impacts data organization, indexing, and overall query performance.