Vertica Blog

Vertica Blog

Under the Hood

Find the Version of Vertica that Created a Database: Quick Tip

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
November 19, 2018

You can run the VERSION() function as one method of displaying the current version of Vertica. But what if you want to know the version of Vertica running when you created the current database? For that info you can query the VS_GLOBAL_SETTINGS table. Helpful Link: https://www.vertica.com/docs/latest/HTML/index.htm#Authoring/AdministratorsGuide/Diagnostics/DeterminingYourVersionOfVertica.htm Have fun!

Vertica’s In-database Random Forest, Highly Scalable and Easy to Use

Elizabeth Michaud, Principal Information Developer
October 25, 2018

Arash Jalal Zadeh Fard authored this post. Vertica has a set of machine learning tools covering a wide spectrum of advanced data analysis functionalities like data discovery, data preparation, model training, model evaluation, and model management. The goal of this blog post is to provide a hands-on example demonstrating how the built-in distributed Random Forest...
Visual Storytelling with SQL

Pure Vertica SQL Graph Flavors

Moshe Goldberg, Vertica System Engineer
September 17, 2018

The art and science of the best sales conversation is “Visual story telling”. This document shows how Vertica VSQL alone can visualize query results in color and graphics. The idea presented is to provide dynamic visuals, based only on Vertica VSQL built-in capabilities. All the graph examples below were drawn without Bash, Java, Python or...
Three 3D arrows, different colors pointing in different directions

How to recognize strings containing nbsp

Phil Molea, Sr. Information Developer, Vertica
August 29, 2018

Maurizio Felici authored this post. Word Processors and Web forms often use the non-breaking space character (nbsp) to prevent line breaks. This character looks the same as a normal space, but uses a different Unicode character with its own UTF-8 encoding. If you inadvertently cut and paste an nbsp character in your database strings, any...

Fast Data Loading with Vertica

Phil Molea, Sr. Information Developer, Vertica
August 20, 2018

Curtis Bennett authored this post. Vertica is well known for its blinding query performance at big data scale, but it can also insert data at very high rates of speed. It can even load data non-stop while being queried, thus enabling real-time analysis of data. Basic Loading Methods There are many ways of loading data...

Data Preparation Tools – Technical Brief

Phil Molea, Sr. Information Developer, Vertica
August 20, 2018

Curtis Bennett authored this blog Vertica supports a number of industry standard data preparation tools for use in the data science life-cycle. In addition to the functions described here, Vertica has a wide array of analytic capabilities which can be leveraged for additional data preparations including time-series analytics (with missing value imputation), analytic windowing and...

Master Blog Series: Getting Started with Vertica

Soniya Shah, Information Developer
August 20, 2018

This post was authored by Soniya Shah. Are you a new Vertica user? If so, you're probably wondering where to start. We're here to help you on your big data analytics journey, from understanding Vertica terminology to making the most of your resources. If you find yourself asking questions like What does the Tuple Mover...

Converting CHAR and VARCHAR to BINARY or VARBINARY

Sarah Lemaire, Manager, Vertica Documentation
August 16, 2018

Jim Knicely authored this tip. As of Vertica 9.1.1, explicit coercion (casting) from CHAR and VARCHAR data types to either BINARY or VARBINARY data types is supported! Prior to Vertica 9.1.1: dbadmin=> INSERT INTO test_coercion SELECT 'Convert me!'; OUTPUT -------- 1 (1 row) dbadmin=> SELECT c1::VARBINARY FROM test_coercion; ERROR 2366: Cannot cast type varchar to...

Getting Help with Command-Line Tools

Sarah Lemaire, Manager, Vertica Documentation
August 15, 2018

Jim Knicely authored this post. Vertica comes with some nifty command-line tools like vsql, admintools, and vbr. If you need assistance using any of these, you can run them with the –-help parameter to view the options available for each tool. Have fun!
Modern Database Analytics

Change the Owner of a Schema

Sarah Lemaire, Manager, Vertica Documentation
August 13, 2018

Jim Knicely authored this tip. As of Vertica 9.1.1, you can now transfer the ownership of a schema to another user! dbadmin=> CREATE USER etl_user; CREATE USER dbadmin=> ALTER SCHEMA my_etl_schema OWNER TO etl_user; ALTER SCHEMA dbadmin=> SELECT schema_name, schema_owner FROM schemata WHERE schema_name = 'my_etl_schema'; schema_name | schema_owner ---------------+-------------- my_etl_schema | etl_user (1 row)...

Referencing Multiple Related LONG VARCHAR Columns

Sarah Lemaire, Manager, Vertica Documentation
August 7, 2018

Jim Knicely authored this post. Table columns having the LONG VARCHAR data type can store up to 32,000,000 octets. Since there is a table row limit size of 32,768,000 bytes, how do I reference more than one related LONG VARCHAR, each having the maximum length? Simple. Use more than one table! dbadmin=> CREATE TABLE test1...
Database Server Room

Generate Random Integers, Including Negative Numbers

Sarah Lemaire, Manager, Vertica Documentation
August 6, 2018

Jim Knicely authored this tip. The RANDOMINT(n) function returns one of the n integers from 0 through n – 1. Those are all positive integers. What if I want to include negative integers? That’s easy with a simple multiplication. dbadmin=> SELECT DECODE(randomint(2), 1, 1, -1) * randomint(11) "Random INT from -10 to 10"; Random INT...