lance-formatlisted
Reference for Lance v7 - the open columnar lakehouse format for multimodal AI - and its Rust crate workspace (`lance`, `lance-table`, `lance-file`, `lance-encoding`, `lance-index`, `lance-io`, `lance-namespace`, and more). Use when building directly on the Lance crates - creating or reading `.lance` datasets, manifests, fragments, deletion files, the 2.x file format and structural encodings, vector / scalar / full-text / geo indexes, MemWAL streaming writes, optimistic-concurrency commits and commit handlers, schema evolution, versioning, time-travel, tags, branches, stable row IDs, namespaces, or object-store config. Triggers on lance crate, .lance file, lance dataset, lance file format, structural encoding, IVF_PQ, IVF_HNSW, IVF_RQ, RaBitQ, lance FTS, zonemap, MemWAL, OCC retry, lance schema evolution, lance namespace, pylance. This is the Lance format and engine (the `lance-format/lance` repo), not LanceDB the database product - but also the right reference for what LanceDB builds on.
tenequm/skills · ★ 28 · Code & Development · score 85
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# Lance v7 reference
Lance is an open columnar format for multimodal AI - "a columnar data format that is 100x
faster than Parquet for random access." It is not one format but a stack of interoperating
specs: a **file format**, a **table format**, **index formats**, **catalog specs**, and a
**namespace client spec**. The Rust workspace at `lance-format/lance` implements all of them
plus Python (`pylance`) and Java bindings.
This skill tracks **`v7.1.0-beta.2`** (the `lance-format/lance` git tag). Pin against tags,
not `main` - Lance ships beta tags every few days and `next`-format encodings can change.
The deep reference is `references/lance-reference.md`. Load it for any concrete schema, parameter,
proto, or constraint. This file is the orientation: read it first, then jump into the
reference section you need.
## Lance vs LanceDB
These are two different things and conflating them produces wrong answers.
- **Lance** - the format and engine. The `lance-format/lance` repo; the `lance` /`lance-*`
Rust crates; `pylance`. It gives you datasets, the file/table format, indexes, commits,
scans. Consumed directly by DuckDB, Polars, Ray, Spark, PyTorch, DataFusion, or your own
Rust/Python code. **This skill is about Lance.**
- **LanceDB** - a separate database *product* (`lancedb/lancedb`) built on top of Lance. It
adds a query-builder API, an embedding registry, rerankers-as-API, multi-language SDK
parity, and managed Cloud / Enterprise tiers. Not covered here.
If you