CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW
defines a view that is persisted in durable storage and
incrementally updated as new data arrives.
A materialized view specifies a cluster that is tasked with keeping its results up-to-date, but can be referenced in any cluster. This allows you to effectively decouple the computational resources used for view maintenance from the resources used for query serving.
Syntax
with_options
Field | Use |
---|---|
OR REPLACE | If a materialized view exists with the same name, replace it with the view defined in this statement. You cannot replace views that other views or sinks depend on, nor can you replace a non-view object with a view. |
IF NOT EXISTS | If specified, do not generate an error if a materialized view of the same name already exists. If not specified, throw an error if a view of the same name already exists. (Default) |
view_name | A name for the materialized view. |
( col_ident… ) | Rename the SELECT statement’s columns to the list of identifiers, both of which must be the same length. Note that this is required for statements that return multiple columns with the same identifier. |
cluster_name | The cluster to maintain this materialized view. If not specified, defaults to the active cluster. |
select_stmt | The SELECT statement whose results you want to maintain incrementally updated. |
( ASSERT NOT NULL col_ident… ) | This option has known performance or stability issues and is under active development.* A list of columns for which to create non-null assertions. |
retention_period | Private preview. This option has known performance or stability issues and is under active development. Duration for which Materialize retains historical data for performing time travel queries. Accepts positive interval values (e.g. '1hr' ). Default: 1s . |
Details
Usage patterns
Maintaining a materialized view in durable storage has resource and latency costs that should be carefully considered depending on the main usage of the view. It’s a good idea to create a materialized view if:
- The results need to be available across clusters;
- View maintenance and query serving would benefit from being scaled independently;
- The final consumer of the view is a sink or a
SUBSCRIBE
operation.
On the other hand, if you only need to access a view from a single cluster, you should consider creating a non-materialized view and building an index on it instead. The index will incrementally maintain the results of the view updated in memory within that cluster, allowing you to avoid the costs and latency overhead of materialization.
Indexes
Although you can query a materialized view directly, these queries will be issued against Materialize’s storage layer. This is expected to be fast, but still slower than reading from memory. To improve the speed of queries on materialized views, we recommend creating indexes based on common query patterns.
It’s important to keep in mind that indexes are local to a cluster, and
maintained in memory. As an example, if you create a materialized view and
build an index on it in the quickstart
cluster, querying the view from a
different cluster will not use the index; you should create the appropriate
indexes in each cluster you are referencing the materialized view in.
Non-null assertions
Because materialized views may be created on arbitrary queries, it may
not in all cases be possible for Materialize to automatically infer non-nullability
of some columns that can in fact never be null. In such a case,
ASSERT NOT NULL
clauses may be used as described in the syntax
section above. Specifying ASSERT NOT NULL
for a column forces that
column’s type in the materialized view to include NOT NULL
. If this
clause is used erroneously, and a NULL
value is in fact produced in
a column for which ASSERT NOT NULL
was specified, querying the
materialized view will produce an error until the offending row is deleted.
Examples
Creating a materialized view
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW winning_bids AS
SELECT auction_id,
bid_id,
item,
amount
FROM highest_bid_per_auction
WHERE end_time < mz_now();
Using non-null assertions
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW users_and_orders WITH (
-- The semantics of a FULL OUTER JOIN guarantee that user_id is not null,
-- because one of `users.id` or `orders.user_id` must be not null, but
-- Materialize cannot yet automatically infer that fact.
ASSERT NOT NULL user_id
)
AS
SELECT
coalesce(users.id, orders.user_id) AS user_id,
...
FROM users FULL OUTER JOIN orders ON users.id = orders.user_id
Privileges
The privileges required to execute this statement are:
- Ownership of existing
view_name
ifOR REPLACE
is specified. CREATE
privileges on the containing schema.CREATE
privileges on the containing cluster.USAGE
privileges on all types used in the materialized view definition.USAGE
privileges on the schemas that all types in the statement are contained in.