mirror of
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Will JonesandClaude Opus 5.5
4d7a64712f
## Summary Adopts the product terminology guide across the docs site pages, SDK docstrings and error messages. "LanceDB OSS" and local mode become **LanceDB Embedded**. "Remote" as the execution model becomes **LanceDB Distributed**, which LanceDB Enterprise provides. Where free vs paid is the point, pages contrast "LanceDB Embedded (open source)" with "LanceDB Enterprise". This is a first trial of the Embedded name, so reviewers can judge it in context. - **Embedded vs Distributed** for where execution runs (`optimize()`, consistency, branching, maintenance). Main pages define it once: "LanceDB Enterprise runs LanceDB Distributed: …" - **LanceDB Cloud** is kept only for legacy-Cloud specifics (`db://` region, the brute-force KNN limit) and marked legacy. "Cloud and Enterprise" becomes Enterprise or Distributed. - **Plan executor** becomes "executor" or the fleet name. - **Error messages** change, e.g. `optimize is not supported for remote tables.` → `... in LanceDB Distributed.` Tests that match on them are updated. - **Vale rules** (`EmbeddedName`, `OSSProduct`, `RemoteExecution`, `DistributedEnterprise`, `LegacyCloud`, `InternalNames`) enforce the terms in prose. Unchanged: identifiers (`availability.oss`, the `remote` module and feature, `RemoteTable`, `db://`), heading anchors, internal code comments, and Geneva. ## Evidence - Rust lib tests for the changed messages and the Python tests in `test_remote_db.py`, `test_materialized_views.py` and `test_table.py` pass locally. - Not run locally: - The Node tests: `remote.test.ts` and `table.test.ts` have updated assertions. - Vale. - The `experimental_functions`-marked materialized-view tests. - `docs/src` API reference was hand-edited to match the docstrings rather than regenerated. ## Merge Risk **Door:** two-way; prose and message text only. **Blast Radius:** `docs`, `error-messages`: callers matching on old error strings would break. Companion PRs: lancedb/docs (assembler labels, STYLE.md) and sophon (Enterprise pages). 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) --------- Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
46 lines
1.8 KiB
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46 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
---
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title: "Lance format"
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sidebarTitle: "Lance Format"
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description: "The open format for multimodal data behind LanceDB."
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icon: "/static/assets/logo/lance-logo-gray.svg"
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keywords: ["lance", "format", "multimodal", "versioning", "column evolution"]
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---
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## Lance format overview {#standard}
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[Lance](https://lance.org/) is an open-source, columnar format designed for
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multimodal AI. It defines how data is stored and organized into versioned tables.
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<span id="embedded" />
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<span id="enterprise" />
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LanceDB Embedded and LanceDB Enterprise both use Lance as their storage foundation.
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The format is developed as an independent open-source project, with its own
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specification and tools.
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## Multimodal data {#storage}
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A Lance table can hold images, video, audio, text, embeddings and structured
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metadata together. For example, a video dataset can keep each clip alongside
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its caption, labels and embeddings, so applications can search and work with
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those fields together.
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## Data access, versioning and column updates {#capabilities}
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- **Efficient data access.** Read individual rows for retrieval and training,
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or scan columns for analytics.
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- **Versioned data.** Read an earlier table version to reproduce an experiment
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or inspect previous results, while that version is retained.
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- **Independent column updates.** Add embeddings or other derived features
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without rewriting the existing image, video or text columns.
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## Learn more {#next}
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<span id="versioning" />
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<span id="evolution" />
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- [Lance format specification](https://lance.org/format): how the format works.
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- [Table versioning](/management/table#versioning): read and manage table versions.
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- [Computed columns](/feature-engineering/add-computed-column): add derived features to your data.
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- [Architecture](/architecture): how LanceDB Embedded and LanceDB Enterprise build on Lance.
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