Query Design and Tips

High level overview of query

Native service interop

• Provides the ability to parse and optimize the query locally
• Local query parsing avoids network call which reduces latency
• Only supported on Windows x64

Two types of queries

Strong recommend to read how Cosmos DB horizontally scales.

Single partition query

• Does not get impacted by container scaling
• Can be done by restricting the partition key in the SQL query by using something like a where clause or the partition key can be passed via the request options

Cross partition query

• SDK visits every physical partition in Cosmos DB and run the query against that physical partition.
  • Depending on the query the SDK may have to aggregate result locally. For example a distinct query would get a distinct list from each partition but has to remove duplicates between partitions.
• Impacted by container scaling. The larger the container the more physical partitions it will contain.