Querying IMap

The following subsections describe how you can access Hazelcast map objects and perform queries on them.

Names

The SQL service exposes IMap objects as tables in the predefined partitioned schema using exact names. This schema is in the SQL service search path so that you can access the IMap objects with or without the schema name.

Schema and table names are case-sensitive; you can access the employee map, for example, as employee or partitioned.employee, but not as Employee:

SELECT * FROM employee
SELECT * FROM partitioned.employee

Fields

The SQL service resolves fields accessible from the SQL automatically. The service reads the first local entry pair of the IMap to construct the list of fields. If the IMap does not have local entries on the member where the query is started, then the list of fields cannot be resolved, and an exception is thrown.

Field names are case-sensitive.

Key and Value Objects

An IMap entry consists of a key and a value. These are accessible through the __key and this aliases. The following query returns the keys and values of all entries in a map:

SELECT __key, this FROM employee

Key and Value Fields

You may also access the nested fields of a key or a value. The list of exposed fields depends on the serialization format, as described below:

For Java objects (Serializable, DataSerializable, IdentifiedDataSerializable), the object is deserialized if needed and then analyzed using the reflection mechanism. Only public fields and getters are taken into account. A public field is exposed using its exact name. A getter is exposed using the JavaBean naming conventions.
For Portable objects, the fields that are written in the Portable.writePortable method are exposed using their exact names.

You cannot query JSON fields in SQL. If you want to query JSON, see Querying JSON Strings.

Consider the Employee class from the example above; the SQL service can access the following fields:

Name

Type

name

VARCHAR

age

INTEGER

Together with the key and value objects, you may query the following fields from IMap<Long, Employee>:

SELECT __key, this, name, age FROM employee

If both the key and value have fields with the same name, then the field of the value is exposed.

"SELECT *" Queries

You may use the SELECT * FROM <table> syntax to get all the table fields.

The __key and this fields are returned by the SELECT * queries if they do not have nested fields. For IMap<Long, Employee>, the following query does not return the this field, because the value has nested fields name and age:

-- Returns __key, name, age
SELECT * FROM employee

Indexes

The SQL service can use IMap indexes to speed up the execution of certain queries. SORTED and HASH indexes are supported.

See the Indexing Queries section for more information on IMap index creation.

High-Density Memory Store

You can query the IMap objects with InMemoryFormat.NATIVE if they have at least one index.

See Configuring with System Properties for more information on setting system properties.