Jack Ye 7e8f0d4982 refactor: always fully refresh materialized views (#4373)
Simplify experimental materialized views to one output-only storage
layout and one full-rebuild refresh implementation.

## Current layout

Local materialized views currently maintain incremental-refresh state
alongside the materialized values:

- an internal `__source_row_id` column for source provenance;
- `mv.definition` plus `mv.incarnation`;
- source version/timestamp, view version, and last-refresh watermarks;
- optional `mv.staging` state for table-function sources; and
- stable-row-ID requirements on the source table.

Refresh classifies source changes, appends or evicts rows when possible,
and falls back to a rebuild for unsupported deltas. Remote
create/refresh also use separate REST mutation paths.

## New layout

An MV is an ordinary Lance backing table containing only:

- the defining query's output columns;
- its current data fragments; and
- `mv.definition`, encoded as a versioned SQL envelope such as
`{"kind":"query","format":1,"query":"SELECT ..."}`.

There is no provenance column, incarnation, source/view watermark,
staging metadata, or stable-row-ID requirement. Local refresh may still
pin a source version for reproducibility, but it always recomputes the
complete result.

Full refresh streams the new result into uncommitted fragments and then
publishes a single transaction that removes every old fragment and
installs the new set. A shared conflict token prevents concurrent
replacements from both committing. This fragment-replacement primitive
is also used by Sophon's SQL worker.

## New remote create workflow

```text
Connection::create_materialized_view(...)
        -> builder renders the defining SELECT
        -> remote Database receives a CreateMaterializedViewRequest
        -> submit CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW ... AS ... through Flight SQL
        -> retain the SQL Query handle while the Job is running
        -> consume the durable SQL-job result
        -> open the created table and read mv.definition
        -> return MaterializedView
```

Remote refresh similarly submits `REFRESH MATERIALIZED VIEW` through
Flight SQL. Cancelling either wrapper forwards cancellation to the
retained SQL query before aborting the local task, so the server
operation is not silently left running.

## API changes

- remove incremental/no-op modes and the `full` switch;
- remove distributed grouped/partitioned refresh APIs and native
vector-source MV APIs;
- keep full-refresh results across Rust, Python, and TypeScript;
- preserve list/describe/drop as object-management operations while
routing create/refresh mutations through SQL.

The storage contract is experimental and has no compatibility shim;
views using the removed layout must be recreated.
2026-10-05 21:33:34 -07:00
2026-09-09 15:33:04 +08:00
2023-03-17 18:15:19 -07:00
2025-03-10 09:01:23 -07:00

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LanceDB

The Multimodal Lakehouse for AI

How to Install ✦ Detailed Documentation ✦ Tutorials and Recipes ✦ Contributors

The ultimate multimodal data platform for AI/ML applications.

LanceDB is designed for fast, scalable, and production-ready vector search. It is built on top of the Lance columnar format. You can store, index, and search over petabytes of multimodal data and vectors with ease. LanceDB is a central location where developers can build, train and analyze their AI workloads.


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