Column Concepts - Kinetica Docs

Kinetica supports the basic notion of SQL tables as containers of one or more columns of data. Table & column names must adhere to the supported naming criteria. A column definition consists of a column type and optional column size, column properties, and nullability. Column properties are used to optimize data storage & speed. The format of a defined column is column name, followed by column definition. A column definition is column type optionally followed by any column size limit or column properties all enclosed in parentheses, followed by an optional nullability statement:

Column Definition Syntax

<column name> <column type> [(<column size / property list>)] [[NOT] NULL]

This format applies to any DDL statement requiring the definition of columns, like CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE (when adding/modifying a column). For example, the following are valid defined columns:

Column Definition Examples

id INTEGER(SHARD_KEY)            -- id is an integer and the table's shard key
name VARCHAR(64, TEXT_SEARCH)    -- name is a 64-byte limited string and text-searchable
ip IPV4                          -- ip is a string in IPv4 format
cost DECIMAL(10, 2)              -- cost is able to hold an 8.2 decimal