Drill Direct Scan optimization for count(*) queries on parquet files

Goal:

When running count(*) queries on parquet files, the physical plan may show below:

Scan(groupscan=[org.apache.drill.exec.store.pojo.PojoRecordReader@331f5e71...

This article is to explain what does "org.apache.drill.exec.store.pojo.PojoRecordReader" mean.

Root Cause:

For select count(*) or count( not-nullable-expr) queries on parquet files, Drill may do an optimization to read from Parquet metadata instead of reading the whole parquet file.
This logic is in code exec/java-exec/src/main/java/org/apache/drill/exec/planner/physical/ConvertCountToDirectScan.java:

/**
 * This rule will convert
 *   " select count(*)  as mycount from table "
 * or " select count( not-nullable-expr) as mycount from table "
 *   into
 *
 *    Project(mycount)
 *         \
 *    DirectGroupScan ( PojoRecordReader ( rowCount ))
 *
 * or
 *    " select count(column) as mycount from table "
 *    into
 *      Project(mycount)
 *           \
 *            DirectGroupScan (PojoRecordReader (columnValueCount))
 *
 * Currently, only parquet group scan has the exact row count and column value count,
 * obtained from parquet row group info. This will save the cost to
 * scan the whole parquet files.
 */

For example:

create table dfs.tmp.`prune2` as select 1 as id from hive.bigtable;
refresh table metadata dfs.tmp.`prune2`;
select count(*) from  dfs.tmp.`prune2` ;

The physical plan contains below line:

Scan(groupscan=[org.apache.drill.exec.store.pojo.PojoRecordReader@4b7000eb[columns = null, isStarQuery = false, isSkipQuery = false]])