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What is ROWGEN().

ROWGEN() is a (very) simple User Defined Transform Function coded in C++ to generate rows. It just counts from 1 to the number passed as argument. Example:

SELECT ROWGEN(10) OVER();
series
--------
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
(10 rows)

What ROWGEN() can be used for.

The main use case for ROWGEN() is in-database data generation. We often have to create test data out of nothing and... while we can use a plethora of functions to generate column values, we also need to generate "the other dimension"... rows.

With Vertica people often use the TIMESERIES trick to generate rows, for example...

SELECT
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER() 
FROM ( 
        SELECT 1 FROM (
            SELECT NOW() + INTERVAL '1 second'  AS mytime 
            UNION ALL 
            SELECT NOW() + INTERVAL '10 seconds' AS mytime 
        ) x
        TIMESERIES ts AS '1 second' OVER(ORDER BY mytime) 
     ) y
;

will produce exactly the same sequence of rows from 1 to 10 as SELECT ROWGEN(10) OVER() but - frankly speaking - I found the second much easier to remember :-)

Test data generation example.

Suppose we want to generate 1,000 rows of test data with the following structure:

  • fname (first name) using a random name from a given list
  • lname (last name) using a random name from a given list
  • depid(department id) in [100,200,300]
  • hdate (hire date) a random date after 01 Jan 2001
  • salary value between 10,000 and 19,000

We can use ROWGEN and Vertica's ARRAY data type and write something like this:

SELECT 
    (ARRAY['Ann','Elizabeth','Lucy','John','Ellen','Robert','Andrew','Mary','Matt'])
        [RANDOMINT(9)]::VARCHAR AS fname,
    (ARRAY['Gates','Lee','Ellison','Ross','Smith','Davis','Kennedy','Clark','Moore','Taylor'])
        [RANDOMINT(10)]::VARCHAR AS lname,
    ( RANDOMINT(3) + 1 ) * 100 AS depid,
    '2001-01-01'::DATE + RANDOMINT(365*10) AS hdate,
    (10000 + RANDOM()*9000)::NUMERIC(7,2) AS salary
FROM
    ( SELECT ROWGEN(1000) OVER() ) x;
   fname   |  lname  | depid |    hdate   |  salary  
-----------+---------+-------+------------+----------
 Mary      | Clark   |   200 | 2003-05-08 | 12512.02
 Andrew    | Lee     |   300 | 2010-09-12 | 17046.66
 Ellen     | Clark   |   100 | 2002-06-04 | 12710.49
 Mary      | Kennedy |   200 | 2008-04-27 | 18996.75
 Ann       | Clark   |   300 | 2006-02-19 | 14206.84
 John      | Davis   |   100 | 2003-09-05 | 10777.43
 Robert    | Smith   |   200 | 2004-03-02 | 12434.80
 John      | Moore   |   100 | 2007-10-07 | 14213.92
 Elizabeth | Gates   |   200 | 2005-02-01 | 16685.84
 Ann       | Davis   |   300 | 2003-08-18 | 16592.06
 Mary      | Gates   |   300 | 2007-12-07 | 16869.87
 Matt      | Ross    |   200 | 2004-08-28 | 12944.05
 Matt      | Clark   |   100 | 2007-05-02 | 12096.31
 Robert    | Davis   |   300 | 2008-10-21 | 10342.12
 Lucy      | Moore   |   200 | 2005-10-12 | 12652.80
 Mary      | Taylor  |   200 | 2004-03-10 | 15921.94
 Robert    | Taylor  |   200 | 2007-09-25 | 16721.34
 Ellen     | Lee     |   200 | 2008-12-08 | 10411.04
 Andrew    | Gates   |   300 | 2009-09-23 | 18468.49
...

How to install ROWGEN()

  • First step is to compile the source code: make
  • Then - as dbadmin - deploy the code in Vertica: make deploy
  • You can run make test to check everything is ok

Please have a look to the Makefile before running make and change it if needed.