AI engineering glossary · Data engineering
What is predicate pushdown?
Predicate pushdown: An optimisation where filter conditions are handed down to the storage layer so irrelevant data is skipped at read time, using file statistics or partitions, instead of loading everything and filtering afterwards.
Predicate pushdown: an example
For WHERE order_date = '2026-08-15', the engine uses min/max statistics to skip Parquet row groups that cannot contain that date.
Related terms
More Data engineering terms
- Protocol Buffers
- Publish-subscribe
- Resilient Distributed Dataset
- Row-oriented storage
- Schema evolution
- Schema on read
- Schema on write
- Sensor
Where you learn it
Predicate pushdown is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.