Xuanwo
9b13e8f725
Python remote queries materialize Blob v2 payloads with `blob_mode="bytes"` through synchronous and asynchronous `to_arrow`, `to_list`, `to_pandas`, and `to_batches`. Deferred reads bind to the actual producing dataset without changing the caller's live table handle, including concurrent writes and same-name DROP/CREATE. Trust only the authoritative `x-lancedb-query-version` plus `x-lancedb-query-snapshot`. A numeric version alone cannot distinguish a recreated table; the ordinary live watermark and user-supplied Arrow metadata cannot establish provenance. An independent immutable handle carries the original identity through every batch, byte-limit split, and large-Blob Range fallback, and requires a verified response echo before accepting payloads. Aliases, NULL/empty results, rerankers, and hybrid legs retain consistent provenance. Missing capability, mixed identities, or a serving node ignoring the precondition fails explicitly; ordinary descriptor queries remain available on older servers. The source docs distinguish Enterprise SQL payload bytes from SDK descriptors. Server dependency: https://github.com/lancedb/sophon/pull/10211. Validation uses retained, independently audited local evidence: 724 Python cases passed (one optional PyAV skip), 67 focused SDK Rust cases passed, 36 server checks passed, and 15 actual REST/SDK scenarios passed across retained runs. These cover sync/async and Arrow file/stream recreation, concurrent overwrite, deletion of a selected version, legacy capabilities, forged IPC metadata, WAL exclusion, and actual mid-batch recreation. The original aggregate experiment exited 101 because its extra harness assumed a Python batch size would split the native result; its 36 server checks and 13 completed scenarios remain valid. The corrected native-batch experiment passed separately for sync and async. No aggregate all-green claim is made. The public batched-range operation has separate cross-partition identity integration in https://github.com/lancedb/sophon/pull/10219 and https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/pull/4994. This change does not claim to fix that loop. Realtime/MemWAL remains outside Blob v2 GA, without disabling existing writes or compaction. No dependency pins changed. Merge/rollout hold remains: upgrade every serving node before enabling the new SDK capability, verify proxy forwarding of both authoritative headers and the verification echo, and preserve queried versions for later reads. Missing or inconsistent capability fails explicitly; identity does not retain versions or authenticate storage paths. Actual deployed proxy/Cloud/PE behavior and production retention remain unverified. Old SDKs do not gain incarnation protection from a server-only upgrade. Published documentation retains the Early access badge and released Enterprise instructions, including explicit fetches for copying. The new Enterprise `blob_mode="bytes"` guidance, snapshot-bound copy example, future streaming restrictions and GA wording remain source-only MDX drafts until release. The correction distinguishing released Enterprise SQL bytes from SDK descriptors remains visible. Documentation validation checked comment boundaries, visible instructions, Python example syntax and whitespace; the site was not built. This documentation-only revision reuses the implementation evidence above.
LanceDB Documentation
For website guides in docs/web, start with
Documentation in CONTRIBUTING.md. That
covers editing pages, generated examples, previews, availability and drafts.
This page covers the SDK reference in docs/src, built with MkDocs. Its
GitHub Actions workflow builds and deploys on
pushes to main, so it can include unreleased APIs. That is separate from the
release editions of the Mintlify website.
Building the docs
Setup
- Install LanceDB Python. See setup in Python contributing guide.
Run
make developto install the Python package. - Install documentation dependencies. From LanceDB repo root:
pip install -r docs/requirements.txt
Preview the docs
Run these commands from the LanceDB repository root. The subshell changes into
docs to load mkdocs.yml, while leaving your shell in the repository root.
(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs serve)
If you want to just generate the HTML files:
(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs build)
If successful, you should see a docs/site directory in the repository root that
you can verify locally.
Adding examples
To make sure examples are correct, we put examples in test files so they can be run as part of our test suites.
You can see the tests are at:
- Python:
python/python/tests/docs - Typescript:
nodejs/examples/
Checking python examples
cd python
pytest -vv python/tests/docs
Checking typescript examples
The examples depend on @lancedb/lancedb at file:../dist, so the package must be
built before running the tests. This uses pnpm; see the
Typescript contributing guide for the toolchain setup.
pushd nodejs
pnpm install
pnpm build
popd
Then you can run the examples by going to the nodejs/examples directory, which is a
separate pnpm package with its own lockfile:
pushd nodejs/examples
pnpm install
pnpm test
popd
API documentation
Python
The Python API documentation is organized based on the file docs/src/python/python.md.
We manually add entries there so we can control the organization of the reference page.
However, this means any new types must be manually added to the file. No additional
steps are needed to generate the API documentation.
Typescript
The typescript API documentation is generated from the typescript source code using typedoc.
When new APIs are added, you must manually re-run the typedoc command to update the API documentation. The new files should be checked into the repository.
pushd nodejs
# `pnpm docs` would invoke pnpm's built-in `docs` command, not the script.
pnpm run docs
popd