Knowage autogenerated query understanding

Question

I'm using knowage software for data analysis, I'm facing performance issues, now I'm watching 'dataset audit' log to see what queries does the system perform. I found this one that, to me, is a nonsense:

SELECT COUNT(*) 
FROM 

(select TOP(100) PERCENT "ATC_1" AS "ATC_1" 
from 

    (SELECT [ID_AFo]
          ,[ATC]
          ,[ATC_1]
          ,[ATC_3]
          ,[ATC_4]
          ,[ATC_5]

      FROM [AFO]

        ) T  order by "ATC_1" ASC
) u

inner T query is the dataset definition query I entered that basically is a select * from [AFO] on my table, outer wrap are made by knowage (I never wrote them)

doesn't a select count (*) from T have performed the same calculation but avoiding a cexpensive order by?

EDIT: Backend (data source) is MSSQL, cache server is MYSQL so frequent queries are on mysql

Answer 1

This query is equivalent to:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM [AFO];

The only reason that I can think of for constructing such a query is if the "100" could be set to another value. I'm not sure if SQL Server's optimizer is good enough to eliminate the ORDER BY in the subquery.