How understand the granularity and block in ClickHouse? - clickhouse

Question

I am not clear about these two words.
Whether does one block have a fixed number of rows?
Whether is one block the minimum unit to read from disk?
Whether are different blocks stored in different files?
Whether is the range of one block bigger than granule? That means, one block can have several granules skip indices.

Answer 1

https://clickhouse.tech/docs/en/operations/table_engines/mergetree/#primary-keys-and-indexes-in-queries
Primary key is sparsed. By default it contains 1 value of each 8192 rows (= 1 granule).
Let's disable adaptive granularity (for the test) -- index_granularity_bytes=0
create table X (A Int64)
Engine=MergeTree order by A
settings index_granularity=16,index_granularity_bytes=0;
insert into X select * from numbers(32);
index_granularity=16 -- 32 rows = 2 granule , primary index have 2 values 0 and 16
select marks, primary_key_bytes_in_memory from system.parts where table = 'X';
┌─marks─┬─primary_key_bytes_in_memory─┐
│ 2 │ 16 │
└───────┴─────────────────────────────┘
16 bytes === 2 values of INT64.
Adaptive index granularity means that granules size various. Because wide rows (many bytes) needs (for performance) fewer (<8192) rows in granule.
index_granularity_bytes = 10MB ~ 1k row * 8129. So each granule have 10MB. If rows size 100k (long Strings), granule will have 100 rows (not 8192).
Skip index granules GRANULARITY 3 -- means that an index will store one value for each 3 table granules.
create table X (A Int64, B Int64, INDEX IX1 (B) TYPE minmax GRANULARITY 4)
Engine=MergeTree order by A
settings index_granularity=16,index_granularity_bytes=0;
insert into X select number, number from numbers(128);
128/16 = 8, table have 8 granules, INDEX IX1 stores 2 values of minmax (8/4)
So minmax index stores 2 values -- (0..63) and (64..128)
0..63 -- points to the first 4 table's granules.
64..128 -- points to the second 4 table' granules.
set send_logs_level='debug'
select * from X where B=77
[ 84 ] <Debug> dw.X (SelectExecutor): **Index `IX1` has dropped 1 granules**
[ 84 ] <Debug> dw.X (SelectExecutor): Selected 1 parts by date, 1 parts by key, **4 marks** to read from 1 ranges
SelectExecutor checked skip index - 4 table granules can be skipped because 77 is not in 0..63 .
And another 4 granules must be read ( 4 marks ) because 77 in (64..128) -- some of that 4 granules have B=77.

Answer 2

https://clickhouse.tech/docs/en/development/architecture/#block
Block can contain any number of rows.
For example 1 row blocks:
set max_block_size=1;
SELECT * FROM numbers_mt(1000000000) LIMIT 3;
┌─number─┐
│ 0 │
└────────┘
┌─number─┐
│ 2 │
└────────┘
┌─number─┐
│ 3 │
└────────┘
set max_block_size=100000000000;
create table X (A Int64) Engine=Memory;
insert into X values(1);
insert into X values(2);
insert into X values(3);
SELECT * FROM X;
┌─A─┐
│ 1 │
└───┘
┌─A─┐
│ 3 │
└───┘
┌─A─┐
│ 2 │
└───┘
3 rows in block
drop table X;
create table X (A Int64) Engine=Memory;
insert into X values(1)(2)(3);
select * from X
┌─A─┐
│ 1 │
│ 2 │
│ 3 │
└───┘