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Query consistency

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Consistency modes

Azure Data Explorer supports two query consistency modes: strong and weak.

Strongly consistent queries (default) have a "read-my-changes" guarantee. If you send a control command and receive acknowledgment that the command has completed successfully, then you'll be guaranteed any query immediately following will observe the results of the command.

Weakly consistent queries don't have that guarantee. Clients making queries might observe some latency (usually 1-2 minutes) between changes and queries reflecting those changes.

  • The advantage of running queries with weak consistency is that it reduces the load on the cluster node that handles database changes.

  • Weakly consistent queries execute on a cluster node that is other than the one managing the database. This can be any "random" node in the cluster (the default), or affinitized according to either the query text (query-affinitized weakly consistent queries), or the database-in-scope of the query (database-affinitized weakly consistent queries).

    • The advantage of using affinity by the query text is improved performance when also using the query results cache.
    • The advantage of using affinity by the context database name is improved efficiency in the scenario of large clusters (>10 nodes) and many databases (>100).

In general, we recommend that you first try the strongly consistent mode. Switch to using weakly consistent queries only if necessary.

Controlling query consistency

Before a query starts actual execution, its consistency mode is first determined.

  1. The consistency mode can be controlled per-query, by setting the queryconsistency client request property.

  2. Users of the .NET SDK can also set the query consistency through the Kusto connection string. Doing so affects all queries sent through that connection string (by setting the client request property automatically.)

  3. Alternatively, it is possible to control the consistency mode on the server side, by setting a Query consistency policy at the workload group level. Doing so affects all queries sent to the service which are associated with that workload group, so users don't need to specify it manually.

Consistency Set client request property to Set query consistency policy to
Strong strongconsistency Strong
Weak (random) weakconsistency Weak
Weak (query text affinity) affinitizedweakconsistency WeakAffinitizedByQuery
Weak (database affinity) databaseaffinitizedweakconsistency WeakAffinitizedByDatabase

Controlling the weak consistency service

The cluster-level query weak consistency policy provides further control over execution of queries running with weak consistency.