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I would recommend using approx_count_distinct_ds_theta with the size you want. The theta sketch will you give you exact count upto the size of the sketch without creating performance bottle necks. Using exact count distinct usually causes issues and even if it works, it will likely be slow.

Thanks for the recommendation. We are certainly taking that into consideration, and will probably implement that as it seems like the only logical way to advance as data grows. However, I’m curious about why it happened suddenly when it was working fine. If you have any ideas/hints I would be happy to hear them.

from what i know errors with sequences are usually timeout errors. With exact counts this can happen if data volume, cardinality and query concurrency increases

It’s most likely the latter because I’m getting the NullPointerException back immediately without a delay. Thanks for your help and input, much appreciated.

+1 to Vijay. I'm curious, too, if you have multiple count distincts in the query, and if so, did you try setting `"useGroupingSetForExactDistinct"`:

true

in the query context (along with the other "exact" settings)? Sounds like you're hitting a bug, I wonder if this would be a workaround. Either way, sketches are a good idea in the long run.

Convinced the product people to just use sketches, but to answer your question @Ben Krug No I don’t have multiple distinct in the query, one is enough to make it fail.