Vertica Blog

Vertica Blog

Vertica

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Intern Spotlight: Becoming an Engineer

Deb Chatigny, Manager, Information Development
September 9, 2019

My name is Richard Xu and I am a sophomore at Harvard University, studying Computer Science. This summer, Vertica has taught me how to be an engineer. Starting a career as a freshman is challenging. I may have the technical know-how and coding abilities, but the freshman stigma loomed over me. At the career fair...

Intern Experience: Documentation at Vertica

Yashika Issrani, Summer 2019 Information Development Intern
August 21, 2019

My name is Yashika Issrani. I am currently a rising senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, pursuing a dual degree in English and Psychology, as well as an IT minor. I also hold a certificate in Professional Writing and Technical Communication. I am grateful to have been a part of that program, as I...

Intern Spotlight: UX Design and the Vertica Forum Relaunch

Julia Avila
August 20, 2019

My name is Julia Avila and I am a rising senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying English with concentrations in Technical Communications and Digital Humanities. I have a deep interest in User Experience Design (UXD) and I am passionate about creating innovative web content. This past summer, I joined the Information Development team...
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Make a Cow Display Query Results in VSQL

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
August 19, 2019

I used to have fun with the amusing old Linux command Cowsay. It inserts any input into a word bubble and draws an ASCII cow to talk to you. You can make the cow display your query results in VSQL! Helpful Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowsay https://www.vertica.com/docs/latest/HTML/Content/Authoring/ConnectingToVertica/vsql/Meta-Commands/MetaCommandReference.htm Have fun!
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Stop a Stubborn Query that Won’t Cancel

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
August 19, 2019

Sometimes a running SQL statement hangs and cannot be stopped using the CLOSE_SESSION or INTERRUPT_STATEMENT function. To stop it, first grab the culprit’s SESSION_ID, TRANSACTION_ID, and STATEMENT_ID from the QUERY_REQUESTS system table, then you can move it to a resource pool that has no resources! After the move and subsequent re-plan, the query will “usually”...
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Loading Data Stored in Scientific Notation to an Integer Column

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
July 17, 2019

Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too big or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. Vertica can display numbers in scientific notation in decimal form with ease. That is, unless the value is a string! You first have to convert the VARCHAR to a NUMERIC and then to...
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Announcing Vertica Version 9.2.1 – Take Analytics Efficiency to the Next Level

Paige Roberts, Vertica Open Source Relations Manager
May 10, 2019

This week, some very cool things have gone into the newest version of the Vertica Analytics Platform that make your analytics fly and save on your AWS budget. The theme for this release is Improving Vertica in Eon Mode Integration with Amazon S3, and there are a whole bunch of new features designed to do...

Display the Vertica Process Memory Allocated

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
April 10, 2019

For common Vertica cluster configurations, there should be a single running Vertica process on each node. You can use the Linux ps command to determine the process ID of the Vertica process. Once you have the process ID, you can display the amount of memory that has been allocated to the Vertica process using the...

Display Database Statement Counts by Type

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
April 9, 2019

There are many types of statements that can be executed in Vertica. Examples include queries, DDL (Data Definition Language), and utility statements. To summarize all the types of statements being executed, you can query the QUERY_PROFILES system table. Example: I’d like to view a count of each statement type across my cluster since the first...

Truncating a Timestamp

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
April 5, 2019

The built-in Vertica function DATE_TRUNC truncates date and time values to the specified precision. The return value is the same data type as the input value. All fields that are less than the specified precision are set to 0, or to 1 for day and month. Example: So did the current Millennium begin on January...

Fun April Fool’s Day Trick Using Directed Queries

James Knicely, Vertica Field Chief Technologist
April 1, 2019

Directed Queries in Vertica encapsulate information that the optimizer can use to create a query plan. Directed queries can serve the following goals: Preserve current query plans before a scheduled upgrade. In most instances, queries perform more efficiently after a Vertica upgrade. In the few cases where this is not so, you can use directed...
Modern Database Analytics

Vertica Joins: A Refresher

Sarah Lemaire, Manager, Vertica Documentation
February 23, 2016

As a Vertica user, you know that using joins can improve query performance by combining records from one or more tables. But sometimes, you need to develop complex joins. Vertica supports many different kinds of joins that perform different functions based on your needs.