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lancedb/docs/web/sql/ddl/index.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: "Index"
sidebarTitle: "Index"
description: "CREATE INDEX and DROP INDEX: one column, with the algorithm chosen by USING."
icon: bolt
keywords: ["create index", "drop index", "sql"]
availability:
embedded: unavailable
enterprise: available
---
## CREATE INDEX {#create}
<CodeGroup>
```sql SQL icon="database"
CREATE INDEX ON documents USING btree (title)
CREATE INDEX text_search ON documents USING fts (text)
```
</CodeGroup>
`USING` is required: it names the algorithm. The scalar algorithms are `btree`,
`bitmap` and `label_list`; `fts` builds a full-text index; and the vector
algorithms are `ivf_pq`, `ivf_rq`, `ivf_flat`, `ivf_hnsw_sq` and `ivf_hnsw_pq`,
where the deployment supports them. Index options go in a `WITH (...)` clause.
<Note>
In LanceDB Enterprise, SQL `CREATE INDEX` covers **one column**. A name between
`INDEX` and `ON` names the index, where the deployment's configuration allows
it; without one, the server names it after the column, as in `title_idx`. For a
multi-column index, use the SDK's [`create_index`](/indexing).
</Note>
<Note>
**Enterprise job type:** `reindex_` followed by the algorithm, such as
`reindex_btree` or `reindex_ivf_pq`; the name says which algorithm is building,
not a different feature. An SDK build that must not replace an existing index
runs as `create_` followed by the algorithm instead. See
[Incremental Indexing](/indexing/incremental-indexing).
</Note>
## DROP INDEX {#drop}
<CodeGroup>
```sql SQL icon="database"
DROP INDEX documents.title_idx
```
</CodeGroup>
Takes the qualified `table.index` name. Find it with the SDK's
[`list_indices`](/indexing) if you created the index without
naming it yourself. A deployment builds the index in the background after
`CREATE INDEX` returns; until that build finishes, the index is not listed and
`DROP INDEX` reports it as not found.
## What to read next {#next}
<CardGroup cols={2}>
<Card title="Indexing" icon="bolt" href="/indexing">
Choosing an index type from the SDK.
</Card>
<Card title="Incremental Indexing" icon="refresh" href="/indexing/incremental-indexing">
Keeping an index current as data arrives.
</Card>
</CardGroup>