Flex Map Functions Reference

The flex map functions let you extract and manipulate nested map data.

The first argument of all flex map functions (except emptymap() and mapaggregate()) takes a VMap. The VMap can originate from the __raw__ column in a flex table or be returned from a map or extraction function.

All map functions (except for emptymap() and mapaggregate()), accept either a LONG VARBINARY or a LONG VARCHAR map argument.

In the following example, the outer maplookup()function operates on the VMap data returned from the inner maplookup() function: 

=> maplookup(maplookup(ret_map, 'batch'), 'scripts')

You can use flex map functions with:

• Flex tables
• Their associated {flextable}_keys table
• Automatically generated {flextable}_view views.

However, use of these functions does not apply to standard Vertica tables.