Mastering Multi-Stage Query Performance in Apache Pinot | RTA Summit 2025
Apache Pinot has become a cornerstone for real-time analytics, enabling organizations to deliver low-latency insights at scale. At the forefront of this evolution recently has been Pinot’s multi-stage query engine, a transformative innovation that unlocks new possibilities for advanced analytics use cases. This session explores the journey of Pinot’s multi-stage query engine, tracing its development, key milestones, and future roadmap. First introduced in version 1.0 primarily to enable query-time joins, the engine has since evolved to support a wide array of features such as window functions, funnel analytics, enhanced debuggability with query stats and comprehensive explain plans, and numerous performance optimizations while continuing to steadily progress toward full standard SQL semantics. With Pinot 1.2.0 you can now utilize advanced query statistics to diagnose bottlenecks. With Pinot 1.3.0, a new multi-stage query explain plan uncovers how queries are executed. Finally, you'll discover how to leverage the reuse CTE feature recently introduced into Pinot to streamline complex queries and optimize resource utilization. Learn practical strategies for performance optimization using the mechanics of join strategies and how to choose the most efficient approach for your use case. LEARN MORE ► Learn about StarTree and Apache Pinot™: https://docs.startree.ai/ CONNECT Subscribe on YouTube: https://stree.ai/sub Community Slack: https://stree.ai/join-slack Twitter: https://twitter.com/startreedata Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/startreedata GitHub: https://github.com/startreedata Site: https://startree.ai ABOUT STARTREE StarTree, powered by Apache Pinot™, is the platform for continuous insights at scale. StarTree turns raw data streams—like clickstreams, logs, vector embeddings, and sensor data—into real-time analytics. It powers customer-facing data products, agent-facing data products, and operational intelligence. Apache Pinot™ delivers real-time analytics by design, rather than extension—built from the ground up to ingest massive data streams with millisecond freshness, execute sub-second aggregations, and support tens of thousands of queries per second. Pinot achieves this while radically reducing infrastructure costs by scanning less data and extreme compression. StarTree was founded by the core software engineering team and inventors of Apache Pinot™, which currently powers hundreds of user-facing applications at companies across industries, including Uber, LinkedIn, Stripe, Target, 7Eleven, NuBank, Etsy, Walmart, Together AI, and more. #apachepinot #realtimeanalytics #startree