Table

Reference to a set of aligned columns (i.e. a table) persisted onto secondary storage.

Each table must have a unique identifier, initially given by the importCsv method.

Tables have String column names.

Tables consists of columns. Columns are stored as segments. Segments are the unit of IO operations, i.e. ra3 never reads less then a segment into memory. The in memory (buffered) counterpart of a segment is a Buffer. The maximum number of elements in a segment is thus what is readable into a single java array, that is shortly below 2^31.

Each column of the same table has the same segmentation, i.e. they have the same number of segments and their segments have the same size and those segments are aligned.

Segments store segment level statistics and some operations complete withour buffering the segment.