Introduction to tables

This topic provides an overview of tables in Imply Polaris.

A Polaris table is a first-class object that holds interrelated data organized in rows and columns. Polaris uses tables to store and display data records.

You can have up to 50 tables per organization, and each table can hold up to 200 columns.

Required user permissions

Members of the Organization Admin, Project Admin, or Data Manager groups, and users with the ManageTables role can view table data and modify table schema.

Members of the Data Analyst or Viewer groups and users with the ViewTables roles can view table data and schema.

For more information on roles and their permissions, visit User roles reference.

Create a table

You create a table using the Polaris UI or the Tables API. In the Polaris UI, select Tables from the left pane to access the Tables page. Click the Create table button located in the top-right corner of the page to create a new table.

For information on how to create a table using the Tables API, see Create a table by API.

The following screenshot shows the Tables page with the Create table dialog displayed:

Create a table

To create a table, you do not need to define a table schema or load data. The minimum requirement to create a table is its name.

The table name must be unique. Additionally, the table name cannot:

  • Be empty
  • Have leading or trailing spaces
  • Contain a whitespace character except space
  • Start with the . character
  • Contain the / character
  • Be longer than 255 characters
  • Contain the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters between ASCII 0-31 and 127-159. See the complete table of ASCII characters for more information.
  • Contain emojis and Unicode block specials, \uFFF0–\uFFFF
  • Contain Unicode characters in the \uD800 - \uDFFF range, which are reserved exclusively for use with UTF-16

Table schema

A table schema is an ordered collection of columns that describe a table. You specify column names, data types, and other metadata for a table in its schema.

There are several ways to specify a schema in Polaris:

For more information on table schemas, see Create a schema.

Types of tables

Polaris supports two types of tables: detail and aggregate. A table's type is determined by its rollup status.

There is no conversion between table types. Once you ingest data, you cannot switch from a detail table to an aggregate table or the other way around.

Detail table

A detail table is the default option. Detail tables have rollup disabled and store each ingested record as is, without any pre-aggregation. For example, an online store manager keeps track of every purchase that is made. When the manager ingests those purchase records into a detail table, the table shows one row for each purchase.

Aggregate table

An aggregate table has rollup enabled to group individual records according to the table's time granularity and dimensions. For example, an online store manager is only interested in the total sales per hour for a region. In this case, the manager does not need to see records for every sale, only a summary by hour.

Table status reference

The Tables page contains a field called Status which displays the current status of the organization's tables.

The following screenshot highlights the Status field of the Tables page:

Table status

Depending on the stage of the table's lifecycle, the table's status can be:

  • Setup incomplete: The table's schema needs to be configured to proceed.
  • Ready for ingestion: The table has a schema and is ready for ingestion.
  • Ingesting: Polaris is in the process of ingesting data into the table.
  • Ingested: Data has been ingested and is ready for querying.
  • Deleting: Polaris is in the process of deleting the table.
  • Deleted: The table has been deleted.

The following diagram shows the full table lifecycle in chronological order:

Table status diagram

Learn more

See the following topics for more information:

← OverviewCreate a schema →