Will Jones d2ca0ce0ab feat: accept multiple on columns for merge insert on remote tables (#4102)
Merge insert has always taken a list of columns to match on, and local
tables have always joined on all of them. Remote tables did not: any
list longer than one was rejected with `MergeInsertBuilder only supports
a single 'on' column`, so a composite-key upsert was impossible against
LanceDB Cloud and Enterprise from Rust, Python or TypeScript.

The remote request now carries `on` as a list and sends it as one
repeated query parameter per column — `?on=shard_key&on=id`. That is how
the lance-namespace spec encodes an array-valued `on`, so the server
receives a composite key in the shape it expects. A single column still
serializes to `?on=id`, exactly what clients sent before, so existing
callers are unaffected. A column repeated within `on` is now rejected
client-side rather than sent for the server to reject with a 400.

No binding changes were needed: `Table.merge_insert` in Python and
`Table.mergeInsert` in TypeScript already accepted a list, it just could
not reach a remote table. Both gain a test for composite keys, and the
doc comments now say what passing several columns means.

Part of
[ENT-2084](https://linear.app/lancedb/issue/ENT-2084/mergeinsertintotablerequest-support-multiple-columns-for-the).

## Example

```python
table.merge_insert(["shard_key", "id"]) \
    .when_matched_update_all() \
    .when_not_matched_insert_all() \
    .execute(new_data)
```

A row whose `id` matches an existing row but whose `shard_key` differs
is an insert, not an update.

## Not included

Java. Java callers reach merge insert through
`org.lance.namespace.LanceNamespace`, whose
`MergeInsertIntoTableRequest.on` is a single string until
lance-namespace 0.12
([lance-namespace#363](https://github.com/lance-format/lance-namespace/pull/363),
[lance#8915](https://github.com/lance-format/lance/pull/8915)). There is
nothing in this repo's Java SDK to change until the `lance-core` pin can
move.

Sending more than one column requires a server that accepts the repeated
parameter ([sophon#7571](https://github.com/lancedb/sophon/pull/7571));
an older server returns a 400 rather than silently merging on one
column.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-01 16:32:04 -07:00
2023-03-17 18:15:19 -07:00
2025-03-10 09:01:23 -07:00

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LanceDB

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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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