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lancedb/docs/web/feature-engineering/view.mdx
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Jack YeandClaude Sonnet 5 de95ed3f6d docs: overhaul curation, feature engineering, security and deployment guides (#4748)
A broad documentation pass across the areas LanceDB Enterprise and
Embedded
diverge on most:

**Data Curation** -- GPU Function execution, Slurm scheduling (and what
Slurm is, for readers new to it), blob late materialization as its own
page, joins, aggregation/profiling, sampling, near-duplicate detection,
chunking, distributed shuffle, and IVF-partition clustering.

**Feature Engineering** -- computed columns and materialized views,
restructured to lead with the Function-based path and show the SQL form
side by side with Python throughout; a single Auto Refresh page instead
of
duplicating scheduling details on every refresh page; adaptive
execution;
checkpointing; GPU and Slurm placement for refresh workers; a Training
Cache page for the PyTorch data loader's automatic cache benefit.

**Security & Governance** -- an Audit Log reference (schema, access,
grants), Secrets promoted to an ordinary catalog object with their own
SQL
DDL and a vending/rotation guide, and privilege-table fixes verified
against the authorization source.

**Deployment & Maintenance** -- Horizontal Scaling and OpenTelemetry
moved
into a real Deployment area; Automated Cleanup folded into Intelligent
Auto-Maintenance (every other maintenance decision already lived there);
RTE Compaction and Advanced Conflict Resolution documented in depth.

**Landing page** -- the Enterprise feature comparison table reorganized
(several redundant or stale rows removed, several new areas added), and
the
"why Enterprise" bullets replaced with ones tied to a concrete page
(Performance, Scale, Fault tolerance, Multicloud deployment, Simplify
operations) instead of vague promises.

Plus a full pass addressing lancedb-gatekeeper's review: a real
test-safety
bug (a quickstart test could silently overwrite and delete a
deployment's
own `frames` table), a fabricated SQL statement with no backing
implementation, an actual dedup-guarantee bug in `take_row_ids`, and
dozens
of documentation-accuracy fixes verified against source rather than
taken
on faith -- each either fixed, or left with an explicit note on why it
needs a feature or deployment owner's sign-off instead of being guessed
at.

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

https://claude.ai/code/session_018PXMCbRH6i5w47TsjeEUMT

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-11-03 16:17:24 -08:00

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---
title: "Create a view"
sidebarTitle: "Create View"
description: "Define a derived dataset as a saved query, with no storage or refresh of its own."
icon: eye
keywords: ["view", "create view", "feature engineering", "saved query"]
availability:
embedded: unavailable
enterprise: available
---
A view is the lightest way to derive a feature-engineered dataset: it stores
a **query**, not rows, so there is nothing to refresh and nothing that can
fall out of date. Reach for one before
[a computed column](/feature-engineering/add-computed-column) or
[a materialized view](/feature-engineering/materialized-views) when the
underlying query is cheap enough to simply re-run on every read.
## Define a view {#create}
A view over a products table, selecting and deriving a few columns:
<CodeGroup>
```sql SQL icon="database"
CREATE VIEW "discounted_products" AS
SELECT id, name, price, price * 0.9 AS sale_price
FROM "products"
WHERE in_stock = true
```
</CodeGroup>
The statement resolves the view's schema from the query at creation time.
Anything the [SQL dialect](/sql/dql/functions) supports can define one: joins,
predicates, aggregates, window functions -- the same expressiveness as
[a computed column's](/feature-engineering/add-computed-column#expressions)
SQL expression, just over a whole derived table instead of one column.
## Read it like a table {#reading}
<CodeGroup>
```sql SQL icon="database"
SELECT * FROM "discounted_products" WHERE sale_price < 20
```
</CodeGroup>
Every read runs the saved query against current data, so `sale_price`
reflects whatever `price` is right now -- there is no staleness window to
reason about, unlike a materialized view between refreshes. A predicate
applied when reading the view composes with the query inside it, rather than
filtering the view's output afterward, so a selective filter does not pay
for rows the view would have produced and then discarded.
## When to use a view instead {#choosing}
| | View | Computed column / materialized view |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Stores | the query | derived values |
| Freshness | always current | as of the last refresh |
| Read cost | the full query, every read | a column or table scan |
| Write cost | none | a refresh |
Reach for a view when the query is cheap, or when reading a stale value would
be wrong for the workload. Reach for a computed column or a materialized view
when the query is expensive and the data changes less often than it is read.
See [View](/sql/ddl/view#choosing) for the full SQL reference comparison,
including the separate privileges each one needs.
## What to read next {#next}
<CardGroup cols={2}>
<Card title="View" icon="eye" href="/sql/ddl/view">
CREATE VIEW, DROP VIEW, and listing views alongside tables.
</Card>
<Card title="Create a materialized view" icon="table" href="/feature-engineering/materialized-views">
The stored-rows counterpart, and when a refresh is worth paying for.
</Card>
</CardGroup>