omnigraph/docs/dev/lance.md
Ragnor Comerford 1bed998052
fix(engine): scalar index coverage + filter literal coercion (query latency) (#216)
* fix(engine): lower date/datetime filter literals as typed Arrow scalars

`literal_to_expr` lowered `Date`/`DateTime` query literals as Utf8 strings,
relying on DataFusion implicit casts. Against a physical `Date32`/`Date64`
column that can coerce the column side (`CAST(col AS Utf8)`), which defeats a
scalar BTREE and degrades the scan to a full filtered read. Lower to typed
`Date32`/`Date64` scalars instead (reusing the loader's
`parse_date32_literal`/`parse_date64_literal`, already used by the in-memory
comparison arm), so the predicate stays a direct column comparison and the
index is used. Malformed literals fall back to the Utf8 string so pushdown
behavior never regresses.

Tests: unit goldens asserting the lowered literal is typed (red before, green
after) + inline-binding pushdown equality in literal_filters confirming the
epoch conversion selects the right rows.

* fix(engine): build scalar BTREE for enum and orderable-scalar @index columns

`build_indices_on_dataset_for_catalog` only handled `String` (-> FTS) and
`Vector` (-> vector). Enums are physically `String`, so an enum `@index`
column (e.g. `status`) got an FTS inverted index, which Lance never consults
for `=`; and `DateTime`/`Date`/numeric/`Bool` `@index` columns fell through
and built nothing. Both meant equality/range filters degraded to full scans
with `indices_loaded=0`.

Dispatch index kind by property type via a shared `node_prop_index_kind`:
enum + orderable scalar -> BTREE, free-text String -> FTS, Vector -> vector,
list/Blob -> none. The helper is shared by the builder and
`needs_index_work_node` so they cannot drift — the latter decides recovery-
sidecar pinning, and under-reporting would leave a HEAD-advancing index build
uncovered (invariant 5).

Tests: scalar_indexes.rs asserts enum/DateTime/numeric @index columns report
`IndexCoverage::Indexed` while free-text String/un-annotated columns stay
`Degraded` (negative control). Docs: docs/user/indexes.md.

* feat(engine): reindex in optimize to keep index coverage current

A scalar/FTS/vector index only covers the fragments it was built over. Rows
appended after the build (e.g. `ingest --mode merge`, whose commit does not
rebuild an existing index) are scanned unindexed, and `compact_files` rewrites
fragments out of coverage. Nothing folded them back in, so coverage decayed as
the graph grew — even the id/src/dst BTREEs that power traversal.

`optimize_one_table` now runs Lance `optimize_indices` after `compact_files`
(incremental merge, not retrain — the same compact->optimize_indices sequence
LanceDB's `optimize()` uses) and enters the publish path on compaction work OR
stale index coverage (new `TableStore::has_unindexed_fragments`, reusing the
fragment_bitmap logic). `optimize_indices` is a committing call with no
uncommitted variant in lance-6.0.1, so it is an inline-commit residual covered
by the existing `SidecarKind::Optimize` recovery sidecar spanning both ops.
Blob-bearing tables are still skipped (the Lance blob-compaction bug is
compaction-specific; reindex-for-blob deferred as a noted follow-up).

Tests: maintenance.rs asserts an appended fragment is uncovered before and
covered after optimize, and idempotency holds (second pass is a no-op).
lance_surface_guards pins the `optimize_indices` signature and its incremental-
coverage behavior. The existing optimize Phase-B recovery failpoint now also
exercises a crash after reindex. Docs: maintenance.md, writes.md, invariants.md,
lance.md, AGENTS.md.

* fix(engine): coerce pushdown filter literals to the column type

Filter literals were pushed to Lance in their natural Arrow type (every integer
Int64, every float Float64). Against a narrower indexed column DataFusion widens
to the literal's type and casts the COLUMN (`CAST(n32 AS Int64)`), which defeats
the scalar BTREE and degrades to a full filtered read. A physical-plan probe
confirms it: an Int32 column filtered by an i32 literal uses `ScalarIndexQuery`;
by an i64 literal it does not.

Thread the scan's `arrow_schema` through `build_lance_filter_expr` ->
`ir_filter_to_expr` and coerce each literal operand to the opposite column's
exact Arrow type, reusing `projection::literal_to_array` + `arrow_cast` (the same
path the in-memory arm uses, so the two arms agree). Coercion never demotes a
filter to None: on failure it falls back to the natural literal, because a node
scan has no in-memory fallback for inline filters.

Supersedes the date-specific change in e4ef67b (PR1): the probe shows dates were
never index-defeated — temporal coercion casts the LITERAL, not the column — so
PR1's index-use rationale was wrong though harmless. The generic coercion
subsumes it; `literal_to_expr`'s date arms revert to the natural Utf8 fallback,
and its unit tests now assert the live coerced path.

Tests: surface guard `scalar_index_use_requires_matched_literal_type` pins the
substrate behavior (matched -> index, widened -> column-cast full scan); unit
tests cover Int32/UInt32/Float32 coercion, range op, reversed operand order, and
the natural fallback; `literal_filters` adds an I32 column with equality + range
and an F32 pushdown case.

* fix(engine): only coerce filter literals when the cast is lossless

The literal coercion in f064121 narrowed unconditionally. typecheck permits
numeric cross-type comparisons (`types_compatible`), so an out-of-domain literal
reaches `literal_to_typed_expr` and casts lossily: a fractional float vs an
integer column truncates (`{ count: 2.7 }` -> `count = 2`, wrongly matching the
count=2 row) and an out-of-range integer overflows to null (`count < 3e9` on I32
-> `count < NULL` -> empty). Both silently change results, and a node scan has no
in-memory fallback for inline filters.

Add a lossless guard for integer targets: round-trip the cast back to the natural
type and, on mismatch, return None so the caller keeps the natural literal
(correct via DataFusion coercion; the index is just unused for that out-of-domain
predicate). Float targets stay coerced -- narrowing F64 -> F32 is the column's own
precision domain, not a value error.

Resolves the two valid review findings on PR #216 (Codex float truncation, Greptile
out-of-range). Tests: unit cases for fractional/out-of-range fallback vs
whole-float/in-range coerce vs F32 exemption; e2e `{ count: 2.7 }` returns no rows.
2026-06-14 16:31:19 +02:00

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Markdown

# Lance Docs Index (for OmniGraph agents)
OmniGraph sits on top of Lance. Many problems — index lifecycle, branching, transactions, fragments, compaction, vector/FTS internals — are answered upstream in Lance's docs, not in this codebase.
This file is the curated entry point. **When you hit a Lance-shaped problem, find the matching topic below and fetch the listed URL(s) before guessing.** Don't grep our codebase for behavior that is documented authoritatively in Lance.
Base URL: `https://lance.org`. **Fetch the FULL page content, not summaries** — use `curl -sL <url> | pandoc -f html -t markdown` or paste the rendered page text manually. Tools that summarize pages (like Claude's `WebFetch`) routinely drop load-bearing details — defaults, `pub(crate)` blockers, sub-specs hidden behind navigation hubs. **Never act on a summarized fetch alone.** Keep this index curated to relevant material — the upstream sitemap has hundreds of URLs (notably the Namespace REST API model surface, Spark/Trino/Databricks integrations) that we don't use.
> **Substrate boundary check.** Before fetching, recall [docs/dev/invariants.md](invariants.md): if Lance already does the thing, we don't reimplement it. The most common reason to read these docs is to confirm a substrate behavior, not to learn what to clone.
## Quick-start (read these once per project)
| Read when | URL |
|---|---|
| Onboarding to Lance — concepts in 10 min | https://lance.org/quickstart/ |
| Onboarding to vector search | https://lance.org/quickstart/vector-search/ |
| Onboarding to full-text search | https://lance.org/quickstart/full-text-search/ |
| Onboarding to versioning / time travel | https://lance.org/quickstart/versioning/ |
| Lance's own AGENTS.md (its agent guide) | https://lance.org/format/AGENTS/ |
## By problem domain
### Storage format & file layout
Touching `db/manifest`, fragment lifecycle, dataset reconstruction, or anything that reads/writes raw Lance state.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Lance file format overview | https://lance.org/format/ |
| File-level format spec | https://lance.org/format/file/ |
| File encoding | https://lance.org/format/file/encoding/ |
| File-level versioning | https://lance.org/format/file/versioning/ |
| Table layout (fragments, manifest) | https://lance.org/format/table/layout/ |
| Table schema metadata | https://lance.org/format/table/schema/ |
| Table-level versioning | https://lance.org/format/table/versioning/ |
| Transactions (commit semantics, conflict types) | https://lance.org/format/table/transaction/ |
| MemWAL (durability story) | https://lance.org/format/table/mem_wal/ |
| Row-ID lineage (stable row IDs) | https://lance.org/format/table/row_id_lineage/ |
| Branches & tags (Lance native) | https://lance.org/format/table/branch_tag/ |
### Branching / tags / time travel
Touching graph-level branches, snapshots, run isolation, the commit graph.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Branch & tag format | https://lance.org/format/table/branch_tag/ |
| Tags & branches operational guide | https://lance.org/guide/tags_and_branches/ |
| Versioning quick-start | https://lance.org/quickstart/versioning/ |
| Table-level versioning spec | https://lance.org/format/table/versioning/ |
### Indexes
Adding/changing index types, fixing coverage, debugging FTS or vector recall, designing the reconciler.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Index spec overview | https://lance.org/format/index/ |
| BTREE scalar index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/btree/ |
| Bitmap scalar index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/bitmap/ |
| Bloom-filter scalar index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/bloom_filter/ |
| Label-list scalar index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/label_list/ |
| Zone-map scalar index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/zonemap/ |
| R-Tree scalar index (spatial) | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/rtree/ |
| Full-text search (FTS) index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/fts/ |
| N-gram scalar index | https://lance.org/format/index/scalar/ngram/ |
| Vector index | https://lance.org/format/index/vector/ |
| Fragment-reuse system index | https://lance.org/format/index/system/frag_reuse/ |
| MemWAL system index | https://lance.org/format/index/system/mem_wal/ |
| HNSW Rust example | https://lance.org/examples/rust/hnsw/ |
| Distributed indexing | https://lance.org/guide/distributed_indexing/ |
| Tokenizer (FTS, n-gram) | https://lance.org/guide/tokenizer/ |
### Reads & writes
Touching the bulk loader, mutation execution, `merge_insert`, `WriteMode` selection.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Read-and-write guide | https://lance.org/guide/read_and_write/ |
| Distributed write | https://lance.org/guide/distributed_write/ |
| Rust example: write & read a dataset | https://lance.org/examples/rust/write_read_dataset/ |
### Schema evolution
Touching `apply_schema`, the migration planner, additive evolution.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Data-evolution guide | https://lance.org/guide/data_evolution/ |
| Migration guide | https://lance.org/guide/migration/ |
### Object store / S3
Touching `storage.rs`, S3-compatible backends (RustFS, MinIO), env vars.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Object-store guide | https://lance.org/guide/object_store/ |
### Data types
Touching schema-language scalar mappings, blob columns, JSON, list columns.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Data types overview | https://lance.org/guide/data_types/ |
| Arrays / list types | https://lance.org/guide/arrays/ |
| Blobs (LargeBinary) | https://lance.org/guide/blob/ |
| JSON | https://lance.org/guide/json/ |
### Performance & tuning
Optimizing scans, fragment counts, cache behavior, memory pool sizing.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Performance guide | https://lance.org/guide/performance/ |
### Compaction & cleanup
Touching `omnigraph optimize` / `cleanup`, the underlying `compact_files` / `cleanup_old_versions`.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| Read-and-write guide (covers `compact_files`, `cleanup_old_versions`) | https://lance.org/guide/read_and_write/ |
| Performance (compaction tradeoffs) | https://lance.org/guide/performance/ |
| Fragment-reuse index | https://lance.org/format/index/system/frag_reuse/ |
### DataFusion integration
The runtime substrate that may carry our query execution. See [docs/dev/invariants.md](invariants.md): we don't rebuild relational machinery.
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| DataFusion integration | https://lance.org/integrations/datafusion/ |
### SDK reference
Looking up a specific Rust API (signature, return type, error variant).
| Topic | URL |
|---|---|
| SDK docs landing | https://lance.org/sdk_docs/ |
## What's not in this index (and why)
- **Namespace REST API model surface** (`/format/namespace/client/operations/models/...`) — hundreds of REST schema docs for the Lance Namespace catalog API. Omnigraph does not run a Lance Namespace server, so these are not reachable from our problem space.
- **Spark / Trino / Databricks / Dataproc / Hive / Glue / Polaris / Iceberg / Unity / OneLake / Gravitino integrations** — not part of OmniGraph's deployment surface.
- **Python / TF / PyTorch / Hugging Face / Ray integrations** — OmniGraph is Rust-only; Python notebooks aren't relevant.
- **Community / governance / release / voting / PMC pages** — meta, not technical.
If a future need pulls one of these into scope, add a row to the matching domain section above and link it from `AGENTS.md`'s topic index.
## Maintenance
When Lance ships a major release that changes any of the above (file format bump, new index type, transaction semantics change, new branching primitive), refresh this index in the same change as the omnigraph upgrade. Stale Lance pointers are worse than no pointers.
### Last alignment audit: 2026-05-22 (Lance 6.0.1 upstream; omnigraph pinned at 6.0.1)
Migration from Lance 4.0.0 → 6.0.1 landed in this cycle (DataFusion 52 → 53, Arrow 57 → 58, lance-tokenizer 6.0.1 added, tantivy* removed). Direct 4 → 6 jump; v5.x was not used as an intermediate (rationale in `~/.claude/plans/shimmering-percolating-duckling.md`). Behavior-affecting findings:
- **DatasetIndexExt moved** from `lance-index` to `lance::index` (Lance PR #6280, v5.0). Six import sites updated. `lance-index::IndexType` and `lance-index::is_system_index` stayed in `lance-index`. `omnigraph-cli` and `omnigraph-server` gained `lance = { workspace = true }` in their dev-dependencies.
- **`DescribeTableResponse` gained `is_only_declared: Option<bool>`** (lance-namespace 6.0+, v5.0 PR #6186). Set to `Some(false)` in both `BranchManifestNamespace::describe_table` and `StagedTableNamespace::describe_table` — every table we return is physically materialized via `Dataset::open`, never "declared-only."
- **`MergeInsertBuilder` execute_reader return shape preserved** `(Arc<Dataset>, MergeStats)`; the publisher CAS chain at `db/manifest/publisher.rs:370-391` works unchanged. Pinned by `tests/lance_surface_guards.rs::_compile_merge_insert_builder_method_chain`.
- **`LanceError::TooMuchWriteContention` variant retained** in v6.0.1 (no rename). The typed publisher translation at `db/manifest/publisher.rs:417-430` continues to apply. Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::lance_error_too_much_write_contention_variant_exists`.
- **`ManifestLocation` field shape stable**: `.path: object_store::path::Path`, `.size: Option<u64>`, `.e_tag: Option<String>`, `.naming_scheme: ManifestNamingScheme`. Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::manifest_location_field_shape`.
- **`LanceFileVersion::default()` flipped V2_0 → V2_1** (v5.0). No effect — every `data_storage_version` callsite explicitly pins `Some(LanceFileVersion::V2_2)` (load-bearing for blob v2: `Blob v2 requires file version >= 2.2` enforced in `lance/src/dataset/write.rs:748`).
- **`Dataset::checkout_version(N).await?.restore().await?`**: `restore()` takes `&mut self` and returns `Result<()>` (mutates in place, does not consume + return a new dataset). The recovery rollback hammer at `db/manifest/recovery.rs:505-522` continues to work. Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::_compile_checkout_version_then_restore_signature`.
- **`DatasetBuilder::from_namespace(...).with_branch(...).with_version(...).load()`** surface preserved (the namespace builder chain at `db/manifest/namespace.rs:162-174`). Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::_compile_dataset_builder_from_namespace_signature`.
- **`compact_files(&mut ds, CompactionOptions::default(), None)`** signature stable. `CompactionOptions` still does not expose `data_storage_version`; `compact_files` builds its own `WriteParams { ..Default::default() }`. Note: `LanceFileVersion::default()` is now V2_1 in v6, so optimize-rewritten fragments come out at V2_1 by default (was V2_0 in v4). Existing explicit V2_2 pins on creates/appends still apply.
- **`Dataset::optimize_indices(&mut self, &lance_index::optimize::OptimizeOptions)`** (via `DatasetIndexExt`) is a depended-on surface as of the index-coverage work: `db/omnigraph/optimize.rs` calls it after `compact_files` to fold appended/rewritten fragments into existing indexes (incremental merge, not retrain). It is a **committing** call (mutates in place, advances HEAD; no uncommitted variant in v6.0.1), so optimize treats it as an inline-commit residual under the `SidecarKind::Optimize` recovery sidecar. Signature pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::_compile_optimize_indices_signature`; the incremental-coverage behavior pinned by `optimize_indices_extends_fragment_coverage` (appended fragment uncovered before, covered after).
- **`Dataset::delete(predicate)` returns `DeleteResult { new_dataset: Arc<Dataset>, num_deleted_rows: u64 }`** — unchanged shape. Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::_compile_delete_result_field_shape`. MR-A will repurpose this guard to the staged two-phase variant once `DeleteBuilder::execute_uncommitted` migration lands.
- **File reader read methods now async** (Lance PR #6710, v6.0). No effect — omnigraph reaches Lance exclusively through `Dataset::scan` and the staged-write API.
- **Tokenizer vendored as `lance-tokenizer`** (Lance PR #6512, v6.0). No effect — no direct tokenizer imports.
- **Lance #6658 closed** (2026-05-14) but `DeleteBuilder::execute_uncommitted` did **not** ship in v6.0.1 — binary search across the release stream shows it first appears in `v7.0.0-beta.10` (the closing commits landed on main but didn't backport to the 6.x line). Tracked as MR-A: migrate `delete_where` to staged, retire the parse-time D2 mutation rule, extend recovery sidecar coverage. **Gated on the Lance v7.x bump**, not this PR. v7.0.0-rc.1 dropped 2026-05-21.
- **Lance #6666 still open** (`build_index_metadata_from_segments` public): vector-index two-phase blocked; inline `create_vector_index` residual retained.
- **Lance #6877 still open** (`MergeInsertBuilder` dup-rowid): PR #109's `SourceDedupeBehavior::FirstSeen` + `check_batch_unique_by_keys` precondition stay load-bearing.
- **`Dataset::force_delete_branch`** (`branches().delete(name, force=true)`, dataset.rs:524) tolerates a missing branch-*contents* ref (vs plain `delete_branch`'s `RefNotFound`), but on the local store still errors `NotFound` if the branch `tree/` directory is fully absent (`remove_dir_all`'s NotFound is not caught for Lance's native error variant, refs.rs:526-549). Both variants still refuse a branch with referencing descendants (`RefConflict`). `TableStore::force_delete_branch` wraps this to be fully idempotent (tolerates already-absent). The single-authority branch-delete redesign uses it for orphan reclamation (eager best-effort reclaim + cleanup reconciler). Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::force_delete_branch_semantics`. Branch delete is "flip the ref atomically, then `remove_dir_all(tree/{branch})`"; branch-exclusive data lives under `tree/{branch}/` so a drop reclaims it immediately without touching `main`.
- **Lance blob-v2 `compact_files` bug** (no public issue found as of 2026-06): `compact_files` disables binary-copy for blob datasets and forces `BlobHandling::AllBinary` on the read side; the v2.1+ structural decoder then mis-counts column infos for the blob-v2 struct and fails with `Invalid user input: there were more fields in the schema than provided column indices / infos` (`lance-encoding/src/decoder.rs::ColumnInfoIter::expect_next`). This fails even a pristine uniform-V2_2 multi-fragment blob table; vector/list/scalar/ragged columns and mixed file versions all compact fine. Reads/queries use descriptor handling (`BlobHandling::default()`) and are unaffected. `optimize` skips blob-bearing tables behind `LANCE_SUPPORTS_BLOB_COMPACTION = false` (`db/omnigraph/optimize.rs`), reporting `SkipReason::BlobColumnsUnsupportedByLance`. Pinned by `lance_surface_guards.rs::compact_files_still_fails_on_blob_columns`, which turns red when the bug is fixed → flip the gate, remove the skip branch + the `maintenance.rs::optimize_skips_blob_table_and_reports_skip` skip assertions.
Surface guards added: `crates/omnigraph/tests/lance_surface_guards.rs` (10 named guards; 5 runtime + 5 compile-only; plus the index-coverage work's `_compile_optimize_indices_signature` and `optimize_indices_extends_fragment_coverage`). Future Lance bumps re-run this file first as the smoke check. Two additional guards from the original plan deferred to follow-up (`manifest_cas_returns_row_level_contention_variant` needs full publisher-race harness; `table_version_metadata_byte_compatible_with_v4` needs `pub(crate)` reach extension).
Bump this date stanza on the next alignment pass.