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Jack Ye
8f37234a86
Feature engineering is now the overview plus one page per operation: add a computed column, refresh a column, refresh a materialized view. Computed columns covered declaring and filling on one page, which are separate decisions with separate failure modes. Functions move to Management, where the other catalog objects are, and absorb the environment-mismatch guidance from the Enterprise page -- a symptom table worth having beside the parameters that cause it. The Enterprise feature-engineering page is merged into the overview. Two of its claims were stale: create_materialized_view is implemented for db:// connections in remote/db.py, so views are not local-only, and the tier is Enterprise rather than 'Cloud and Enterprise'. The REST reference leaves the sidebar. Mintlify only generates per-endpoint pages from a navigation group -- hidden, dropdowns, global anchors and a top-level openapi key were all tried -- so removing the group removes those pages. The overview survives as an unlisted page, linked from SDKs & SQL, and the spec still ships for anything that wants to read it directly.
118 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
118 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
---
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title: "Refresh a materialized view"
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sidebarTitle: "Refresh Materialized View"
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description: "A lakehouse object: a table defined by a query over another table, kept current incrementally."
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icon: table
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keywords: ["materialized view", "create_materialized_view", "refresh", "incremental"]
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---
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A materialized view is a lakehouse object: a table whose contents are defined by
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a query over another table. The query is recorded in the view's schema; a
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refresh computes the rows.
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The result is an ordinary table. It can be queried, indexed, and searched, and
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it appears in `table_names()` — nothing about reading it is special.
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## Create and refresh {#create-and-refresh}
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```python
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import lancedb
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db = lancedb.connect(
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"./.lancedb",
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storage_options={"new_table_enable_stable_row_ids": "true"},
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)
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table = db.create_table("people", [{"name": "ada", "age": 36},
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{"name": "kid", "age": 7}])
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view = db.create_materialized_view(
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"adults",
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"people",
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select=["name", ("shout", "upper(name)")],
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where="age >= 18",
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)
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result = view.refresh()
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result.rows_written
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# 1
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```
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`select` takes column names, `(alias, expression)` pairs, or a dict of the same.
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Omitting it selects every source column, expanded against the schema as it was
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at creation time. `where` filters source rows; `limit` caps the view.
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## The source needs stable row ids {#stable-row-ids}
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<Warning>
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The source table must have been created with stable row ids:
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```python
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db = lancedb.connect(uri, storage_options={"new_table_enable_stable_row_ids": "true"})
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```
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They are what keeps the view's provenance valid when the source is compacted,
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and **they cannot be enabled after a table exists**. A table created without
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them cannot later become the source of a view — it has to be recreated.
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</Warning>
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This is the one decision here that is hard to undo, so it is worth setting the
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option on any table you might later want to derive from.
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## Refreshes are incremental {#incremental}
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`refresh()` reconciles the source's changes into the view — rows added, changed,
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or removed since the last refresh — rather than recomputing from scratch. It
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falls back to a full rebuild when the changes cannot be reconciled.
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Two arguments override that:
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- `full=True` forces a rebuild.
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- `source_version=N` refreshes against that source version instead of the
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latest, which is how you make a view reproduce a known point in time.
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Concurrent refreshes of one view do not duplicate rows. If two plan the same
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source rows, they conflict on commit and the loser raises rather than writing
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them twice — so a retry loop around `refresh()` is safe.
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## Against a deployment {#availability}
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<Badge color="red">Enterprise</Badge>
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`create_materialized_view` works on a `db://` connection as well as a local one.
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What changes is where the refresh runs -- across the cluster rather than in your
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process -- and that SQL can drive it:
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```sql
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REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW chunks
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```
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`WITH (full = true)` recomputes every row instead of only the rows the source
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has added since the last refresh. `SHOW MATERIALIZED VIEWS` lists them, which is
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cheaper than `list_materialized_views` -- that method finds views by reading
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every table's schema, so it costs one open per table.
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<Note>
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`CASCADE` is accepted by the parser but not yet implemented. A view built on
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another view is refreshed by refreshing each in dependency order.
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</Note>
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## Working with the view {#working-with-the-view}
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`view.table()` returns the underlying table for querying, indexing, or search.
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`view.definition()` returns the recorded query — the select list, predicate, and
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limit — which is how you check what a view actually contains without inferring
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it from the rows.
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An existing view is reopened with `db.open_materialized_view(name)`.
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## What to read next {#next}
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<CardGroup cols={2}>
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<Card title="Refresh a column" icon="arrows-rotate" href="/feature-engineering/refresh-column">
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Derive a column instead of a whole table.
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</Card>
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<Card title="Versioning" icon="clock-rotate-left" href="/tables/versioning">
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Every refresh commits a table version.
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</Card>
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</CardGroup>
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