Considerations for Measuring Disk Space - Teradata VantageCloud Lake

Lake - Database Reference

Deployment
VantageCloud
Edition
Lake
Product
Teradata VantageCloud Lake
Release Number
Published
February 2025
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en-US
ft:lastEdition
2025-11-21
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ohi1683672393549

When you perform these calculations, remember the following:

  • Implement your measurements over a large number of rows to avoid distorting the figures with table overhead issues.
  • An INTEGER column uses 4 bytes.

    A SUM(INTEGER) column uses 8 bytes because the system casts its data type to FLOAT.

  • If you have not explicitly specified a COUNT column in your aggregate join index definition, add 4 bytes to the definition to account for the required COUNT column.

Example Measurement 1

Table A and Table B both have 60 million 100-byte rows. An aggregate join index with two INTEGER columns and one SUM(INTEGER) column.

From these figures, the computed size of the aggregate join index is as follows:

Row size = (2 × 4 INTEGER bytes) + 4 COUNT bytes + 8 SUM bytes + 14 overhead bytes = 34 bytes

Type of Join Index Join Index Row
Non-aggregate For every matching row in the base table.
Aggregate Per group of rows in the join of the base tables.

The permanent space specification is as follows:

Current Permanent Space (Bytes) Peak Permanent Space (Bytes) Maximum Permanent Space (Bytes)
2,041,595,904 2,041,595,904 0

Using these figures, you can compute a measured row size:

Row size = 2,041,595,904 ÷ 60,000,000 = 34.03 bytes

Because the measured and computed disk spaces are identical within a narrow confidence interval, you can conclude that the disk space formula is accurate for an aggregate join index.

Example Measurement 2

This example examines the size of a simple join index created for the same tables used in Example Measurement 1. There is a savings of 8 bytes because there is no COUNT column and no SUM(INTEGER) column.

The computed row size is as follows:

Row size = 34 bytes – (4 INTEGER bytes + 4 SUM(INTEGER) bytes) = 26 bytes

The permanent space specification is as follows.

Current Permanent Space (Bytes) Peak Permanent Space (Bytes) Maximum Permanent Space (Bytes)
1,561,216,000 1,561,216,000 0

Using these figures, you can compute a measured row size.

Row size = 1,561,216,000 ÷ 60,000,000 = 26.02

As with Example Measurement 1, the measured and computed disk spaces are identical, and you can conclude that the disk space formula is accurate for a simple join index.