Hi, Mark,

Thanks for your interest in FastBit software.
Looks like you are talking about number of columns in a query
expression.  In this case, the practical limitation would be memory
required to hold the columns in core.  A rough estimate goes like
this, if your query selects 1 million rows (before group-by
operations) and 100 columns, then you should be prepared to store 100
million values in memory.  For some group by operations, a second copy
of the data is generated, which can double the space requirement.

If your group by operations can be processed one data partition at a
time, less memory might be needed, but the above back of the envelop
number is useful to keep in mind.

John


On 5/30/13 11:47 AM, Mark Hansen wrote:
> I'm wondering if there is any practical limit on the number of columns
> in a FastBit "table"?
> 
> My company is looking at FastBit as a potential backend for an
> analytics engine.  We would have one big table with about 100 columns
> - 30 of which need to be indexed for searching.  We call these the
> "dimensions".  The other 70 - the "metrics" - do not need to be
> indexed, but might need some aggregation like SUM, AVG, STDEV, etc. 
> The data is going to be pretty sparse - typically 3-4 "dimensions" are
> populated and 8-12 "metrics" per row, with the rest of the columns set
> to NULL.
> 
> Queries will be typically like:
> 
> SELECT d1, d5, d18, m2, m19, m29 FROM TABLE where d1 between
> lowerBound and upperBound
> 
> We are looking at about 100 columns and 100 MILLION rows.  A few of
> the dimension columns (that need to be indexed) contain arbitrary
> length text values.
> 
> We could partition the table and decrease the rows to about 10 MILLION
> if necessary.
> 
> Does this sound like something that FastBit is well suited for?
> 
> -- Mark
> 
> -- 
> Mark Hansen
> Founder & President
> Digital Brand Mine | 708 3rd Ave | New York, New York 10017
> office: 212-961-7250
> cell: 914-924-3398
> http://digitalbrandmine.com/ | email: [email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>
> 
> 
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