and `REPARTITION_BY_RANGE` hints are supported and are equivalent to `coalesce`, `repartition`, and
`repartitionByRange` [Dataset APIs](api/scala/org/apache/spark/sql/Dataset.html), respectively. These hints give users
a way to tune performance and control the number of output files in Spark SQL. When multiple partitioning hints are
specified, multiple nodes are inserted into the logical plan, but the leftmost hint is picked by the optimizer.
#### Partitioning Hints Types
* **COALESCE**
The `COALESCE` hint can be used to reduce the number of partitions to the specified number of partitions. It takes a partition number as a parameter.
* **REPARTITION**
The `REPARTITION` hint can be used to repartition to the specified number of partitions using the specified partitioning expressions. It takes a partition number, column names, or both as parameters.
* **REPARTITION_BY_RANGE**
The `REPARTITION_BY_RANGE` hint can be used to repartition to the specified number of partitions using the specified partitioning expressions. It takes column names and an optional partition number as parameters.
The `REBALANCE` hint can be used to rebalance the query result output partitions, so that every partition is of a reasonable size (not too small and not too big). It can take column names as parameters, and try its best to partition the query result by these columns. This is a best-effort: if there are skews, Spark will split the skewed partitions, to make these partitions not too big. This hint is useful when you need to write the result of this query to a table, to avoid too small/big files. This hint is ignored if AQE is not enabled.
Join hints allow users to suggest the join strategy that Spark should use. Prior to Spark 3.0, only the `BROADCAST` Join Hint was supported. `MERGE`, `SHUFFLE_HASH` and `SHUFFLE_REPLICATE_NL` Joint Hints support was added in 3.0. When different join strategy hints are specified on both sides of a join, Spark prioritizes hints in the following order: `BROADCAST` over `MERGE` over `SHUFFLE_HASH` over `SHUFFLE_REPLICATE_NL`. When both sides are specified with the `BROADCAST` hint or the `SHUFFLE_HASH` hint, Spark will pick the build side based on the join type and the sizes of the relations. Since a given strategy may not support all join types, Spark is not guaranteed to use the join strategy suggested by the hint.
Suggests that Spark use broadcast join. The join side with the hint will be broadcast regardless of `autoBroadcastJoinThreshold`. If both sides of the join have the broadcast hints, the one with the smaller size (based on stats) will be broadcast. The aliases for `BROADCAST` are `BROADCASTJOIN` and `MAPJOIN`.
* **MERGE**
Suggests that Spark use shuffle sort merge join. The aliases for `MERGE` are `SHUFFLE_MERGE` and `MERGEJOIN`.
* **SHUFFLE_HASH**
Suggests that Spark use shuffle hash join. If both sides have the shuffle hash hints, Spark chooses the smaller side (based on stats) as the build side.