Bucket Management

Creating Buckets

ArcaneDB provides three distinct creation modes, controlled by keyword modifiers on the create bucket statement. The schema is declared as a parenthesised, comma-separated list of field_name: type pairs.

Syntax:

create [forced] [unique] bucket <name> (<field>: <type>, ...);
create [forced] [unique] bucket <name> from csv("<filepath>");

Creation Modes:

Syntax	Behaviour
create bucket	Attempts to create the bucket. Raises an error if a bucket with that name already exists.
create unique bucket	Creates the bucket only if it does not already exist. If it exists, the statement is silently ignored. Equivalent to SQL’s CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS.
create forced bucket	Always creates the bucket, dropping and replacing any existing bucket of the same name along with all its data.
create forced unique bucket	If the bucket exists, it is dropped and recreated (identical to forced). If it does not exist, it is created fresh.

Example — schema declaration:

create forced bucket Sales (
    product:   string,
    price:     float,
    quantity:  int,
    revenue:   float,
    timestamp: int
);

Example — creation from a CSV file:

create forced unique bucket Products2 from csv("generated.csv");

When creating from a CSV file, ArcaneDB infers the schema from the file’s header row and populates the bucket with the file’s data in a single operation.

Dropping a Field

An individual field can be permanently removed from a bucket’s schema using the drop statement. The field is removed from all existing records as well as from the schema definition. This operation is irreversible without recreating the bucket.

Syntax:

drop <field> from <bucket>;

Example:

drop price from Products;

After execution, the price field no longer exists on any record in Products and cannot be referenced in subsequent queries against that bucket.

Truncating a Bucket

The truncate statement removes all records from a bucket while preserving the schema.

Syntax:

truncate <bucket>;

Example:

truncate Names;

Inspecting a Bucket

The describe statement prints the schema of a named bucket, including all field names and their types.

Syntax:

describe <bucket>;

Example:

describe Products;
describe Names;

Listing All Buckets

The show buckets statement enumerates all buckets currently registered in the database.

Syntax:

show buckets;