Z Ordering is cool but I don t think it s always necessary A

Question

Z Ordering is cool but I don t think it s always necessary A lot of times sorting the data is all you need Sorting the data is good for tables that are always filtered by a certain column for example Hierarchical sorting is also good in a lot of instances I am assuming that sorting would be easier to implement than Z Ordering also easier to explain and use perhaps What do folks think about a `delta table optimize sort col1 col2 ` method that hierarchically sorts the data We can also add a `delta table optimize z order` method of course

Will Jones · Answer

I think I ll go for Z order first since it doesn t seem that hard to implement I wrote the steps here <https github com delta io delta rs issues 1127 issuecomment 1569091839>

Will Jones · Answer

However I do want to eventually explore a pure sort implementation too since I think we can make that idempotent and early return if the data is already sorted I think there s good use cases for sorted data we should explore in the long term

Matthew Powers · Answer

Sweet sounds great thank you