StarRocks Materialized Views

Pre-aggregate and accelerate StarRocks queries with synchronous rollups and asynchronous materialized views, including transparent query rewrite.

When to Use

• Repeated aggregations or joins that are expensive to recompute
• Building scheduled, refreshed summary tables
• Enabling transparent query rewrite so existing queries auto-use the MV
• Managing MV refresh and lifecycle

Type selection:

• Synchronous Rollup — simple pre-aggregations, automatically maintained
• Asynchronous MV — complex transformations, joins, scheduled refresh

Related skills: [starrocks-query-optimization] for when to reach for an MV vs other tuning; [starrocks-etl-and-tasks] for SUBMIT TASK-based refreshes.

Synchronous Rollup (Automatic)

Use for: Simple pre-aggregations, automatically maintained

-- Create rollup (automatically synced)
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW order_daily_rollup AS
SELECT
    order_date,
    store_id,
    SUM(amount) as total_amount,
    COUNT(*) as order_count
FROM orders
GROUP BY order_date, store_id;

-- Query automatically uses rollup when applicable
SELECT order_date, SUM(amount)
FROM orders
WHERE order_date >= '2024-01-01'
GROUP BY order_date;
-- Automatically uses order_daily_rollup if beneficial

Asynchronous Materialized View (Scheduled)

Use for: Complex transformations, joins, scheduled refresh

Create async MV:

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW mv_user_metrics
REFRESH ASYNC START('2024-01-01 00:00:00') EVERY(INTERVAL 1 HOUR)
AS
SELECT
    u.user_id,
    u.username,
    u.region,
    COUNT(DISTINCT o.order_id) as total_orders,
    SUM(o.amount) as total_spent,
    MAX(o.order_date) as last_order_date,
    COUNT(DISTINCT DATE(o.order_date)) as active_days
FROM users u
LEFT JOIN orders o ON u.user_id = o.user_id
GROUP BY u.user_id, u.username, u.region;

Query async MV directly:

-- Query the MV like a table
SELECT *
FROM mv_user_metrics
WHERE region = 'US'
  AND total_orders > 10
ORDER BY total_spent DESC
LIMIT 100;

Async MV with partition:

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW mv_daily_revenue
PARTITION BY date
REFRESH ASYNC START('2024-01-01 00:00:00') EVERY(INTERVAL 1 DAY)
AS
SELECT
    order_date as date,
    store_id,
    SUM(amount) as revenue,
    COUNT(*) as order_count
FROM orders
GROUP BY order_date, store_id;

Manage materialized views:

-- Show MVs
SHOW MATERIALIZED VIEWS FROM database_name;

-- Refresh manually
REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW mv_user_metrics;

-- Refresh a partition range (by partition-column value, not partition name)
REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW mv_daily_revenue PARTITION START ("2024-01-01") END ("2024-01-02");

-- Drop MV
DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW mv_user_metrics;

-- Check MV status
SELECT * FROM information_schema.materialized_views
WHERE table_name = 'mv_user_metrics';

MV Query Rewrite (Transparent Optimization)

StarRocks can automatically rewrite queries to use MVs:

-- Original query
SELECT order_date, store_id, SUM(amount)
FROM orders
WHERE order_date >= '2024-01-01'
GROUP BY order_date, store_id;

-- If mv_daily_revenue exists, StarRocks automatically uses it
-- No query change needed!

For async MVs on the default catalog, query rewrite is enabled by default (enablematerializedviewrewrite and enablematerializedviewunion_rewrite both default to true since v2.5). You'd only set these to re-enable after disabling:

SET enable_materialized_view_rewrite = true;
SET enable_materialized_view_union_rewrite = true;