System Tables
Table of contents
Database Metadata System Tables
dolt_branches
dolt_branches
dolt_branches
contains information about branches known to the database.
Because the branch information is global to all clients, not just your session, dolt_branches
system table is read-only. Branches can be created or deleted with the DOLT_BRANCH()
stored procedure.
Schema
Example Queries
Get all the branches.
To find the current active branch use select active_branch()
.
dolt_branches
only contains information about local branches. For branches on a remote you have fetched, see dolt_remote_branches
.
dolt_remote_branches
dolt_remote_branches
dolt_remote_branches
contains information about branches on remotes you have fetched. It has the same schema as dolt_branches
, but contains only branches found on remotes, not any local branches.
Schema
Example Queries
Get all local and remote branches in a single query. Remote branches will have the prefix remotes/<remoteName>
in their names.
dolt_docs
dolt_docs
dolt_docs
stores the contents of Dolt docs (LICENSE.md
, README.md
).
You can modify the contents of these files via SQL, but you are not guaranteed to see these changes reflected in the files on disk.
Schema
dolt_procedures
dolt_procedures
dolt_procedures
stores each stored procedure that has been created on the database.
The values in this table are implementation details associated with the storage of stored procedures. It is recommended to use built-in SQL statements for examining and modifying stored procedures rather than using this table directly.
Schema
When using the standard CREATE PROCEDURE
workflow, the name
column will always be lowercase. Dolt assumes that name
is always lowercase as a result, and manually inserting a stored procedure must also have a lowercase name
. Otherwise, it will be invisible to some operations, such as DROP PROCEDURE
.
Example Query
dolt_remotes
dolt_remotes
dolt_remotes
returns the remote subcontents of the repo_state.json
, similar to running dolt remote -v
from the Dolt command line.
The dolt_remotes
table is currently read only. Use the dolt_remote()
procedure to add, update or delete remotes.
Schema
Example Query
dolt_schemas
dolt_schemas
dolt_schemas
stores SQL schema fragments for a dolt database that are versioned alongside the database itself. Certain DDL statements will modify this table and the value of this table in a SQL session will affect what database entities exist in the session.
The values in this table are implementation details associated with the storage of certain schema elements. It is recommended to use built-in SQL statements for examining and modifying schemas, rather than using this table directly.
Schema
Currently, all VIEW
, TRIGGER
and EVENT
definitions are stored in the dolt_schemas
table. The column type
defines whether the fragment is view
, trigger
or event
. The column name
is the fragment name as supplied in the CREATE
statement. The column fragment
stores the CREATE
statement of the fragment. The column json
is any additional important information such as CreateAt
field for the fragment.
The values in this table are partly implementation details associated with the implementation of the underlying database objects.
Example Query
Then you can view them in dolt_schemas
:
dolt_tags
dolt_tags
dolt_tags
shows information for all active tags in the current database.
DOLT_TAG() procedure can be used to INSERT and DELETE tags on the dolt_tags
table.
Schema
Example Query
Create a tag using dolt_tag() stored procedure.
Get all the tags.
dolt_statistics
dolt_statistics
dolt_statistics
includes currently collected database statistics. This information is stored outside of the commit graph and is not subject to versioning semantics.
Schema
Database History System Tables
dolt_blame_$tablename
dolt_blame_$tablename
For every user table that has a primary key, there is a queryable system view named dolt_blame_$tablename
which can be queried to see the user and commit responsible for the current value of each row. This is equivalent to the dolt blame
CLI command. Tables without primary keys will not have an associated dolt_blame_$tablename
.
Schema
The dolt_blame_$tablename
system view has the following columns:
The remaining columns are dependent on the schema of the user table. Every column from the primary key of your table will be included in the dolt_blame_$tablename
system table.
Query Details
Executing a SELECT *
query for a dolt_blame_$tablename
system view will show you the primary key columns for every row in the underlying user table and the commit metadata for the last commit that modified that row. Note that if a table has any uncommitted changes in the working set, those will not be displayed in the dolt_blame_$tablename
system view.
dolt_blame_$tablename
is only available for tables with a primary key. Attempting to query dolt_blame_$tablename
for a table without a primary key will return an error message.
Example Query
Consider the following example table city
:
To find who set the current values, we can query the dolt_blame_city
table:
dolt_commit_ancestors
dolt_commit_ancestors
The dolt_commit_ancestors
table records the ancestors for every commit in the database. Each commit has one or two ancestors, two in the case of a merge commit.
Schema
Each commit hash has one or two entries in the table, depending on whether it has one or two parent commits. The root commit of the database has a NULL
parent. For merge commits, the merge base will have parent_index
0, and the commit merged will have parent_index
1.
dolt_commits
dolt_commits
The dolt_commits
system table shows ALL commits in a Dolt database.
This is similar, but different from the dolt_log
system table and the dolt log
CLI command. dolt log
shows you commit history for all commit ancestors reachable from the current HEAD
of the checked out branch, whereas dolt_commits
shows all commits from the entire database, no matter which branch is checked out.
Schema
Example Query
Using the dolthub/first-hour-db
database from DoltHub, we can query for the five commits before April 20th, 2022, across all commits in the database (regardless of what is checked out to HEAD
) with this query:
dolt_history_$TABLENAME
dolt_history_$TABLENAME
For every user table named $TABLENAME
, there is a read-only system table named dolt_history_$TABLENAME
that can be queried to find a row's value at every commit in the current branch's history.
Schema
Every Dolt history table contains columns for commit_hash
, committer
, and commit_date
, plus every column from the user table's schema at the current checked out branch.
Example Schema
Consider a table named mytable
with the following schema:
The schema for dolt_history_states
would be:
Example Query
Assume a database with the mytable
table above and the following commit graph:
When the feature
branch is checked out, the following query returns the results below, showing the row at every ancestor commit reachable from our current branch.
dolt_log
dolt_log
The dolt_log
system table contains the commit log for all commits reachable from the current HEAD
. This is the same data returned by the dolt log
CLI command.
Schema
Example Query
The following query shows the commits reachable from the current checked out head and created by user jennifersp
since April, 2022:
Database Diffs
dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
For every user table named $TABLENAME
, there is a read-only system table named dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
that can be queried to see a diff of the data in the specified table between any two commits in the database. For example, you can use this system table to view the diff between two commits on different branches. The schema of the returned data from this system table is based on the schema of the underlying user table at the currently checked out branch.
You must provide from_commit
and to_commit
in all queries to this system table in order to specify the to and from points for the diff of your table data. Each returned row describes how a row in the underlying user table has changed from the from_commit
ref to the to_commit
ref by showing the old and new values.
dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
is the analogue of the dolt diff
CLI command.
It represents the two-dot diff between the two commits provided. The dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
system table also exposes diff information, but instead of a two-way diff, it returns a log of individual diffs between all adjacent commits in the history of the current branch. In other words, if a row was changed in 10 separate commits, dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
will show 10 separate rows – one for each individual delta. In contrast, dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
would show a single row that combines all the individual commit deltas into one diff.
The DOLT_DIFF()
table function is an alternative to the dolt_commit_diff_$tablename
system table for cases where a table's schema has changed between the to
and from
commits. Consider the DOLT_DIFF()
table function if you need to see the schema from each of those commits, instead of using the schema from the currently checked out branch.
Schema
The remaining columns are dependent on the schema of the user table at the currently checked out branch.
For every column X
in your table at the currently checked out branch, there are columns in the result set named from_X
and to_X
with the same type as X
in the current schema. The from_commit
and to_commit
parameters must both be specified in the query, or an error is returned.
Example Schema
Consider a simple example with a table that has one column:
Based on the table's schema above, the schema of the dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
will be:
Query Details
Now consider the following branch structure:
We can use the above table to represent two types of diffs: a two-point diff and a three-point diff. In a two-point diff we want to see the difference in rows between Point C and Point G.
We can also compute a three-point diff using this table. In a three-point diff we want to see how our feature branch has diverged from our common ancestor E, without including the changes from F and G on main.
The dolt_merge_base
function computes the closest ancestor E between main
and feature
.
Additional Notes
There is one special to_commit
value WORKING
which can be used to see what changes are in the working set that have yet to be committed to HEAD. It is often useful to use the HASHOF()
function to get the commit hash of a branch, or an ancestor commit. The above table requires both from_commit
and to_commit
to be filled.
dolt_diff
dolt_diff
The dolt_diff
system table shows which tables in the current database were changed in each commit reachable from the active branch's HEAD. When multiple tables are changed in a single commit, there is one row in the dolt_diff
system table for each table, all with the same commit hash. Any staged or unstaged changes in the working set are included with the value WORKING
for their commit_hash
. After identifying the tables that changed in a commit, the dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
system tables can be used to determine the data that changed in each table.
Schema
The DOLT_DIFF
system table has the following columns
Query Details
dolt_diff
displays the changes from the current branch HEAD, including any working set changes. If a commit did not make any changes to tables (e.g. an empty commit), it is not included in the dolt_diff
results.
Example Query
Taking the dolthub/first-hour-db
database from DoltHub as our example, the following query uses the dolt_diff
system table to find all commits, and the tables they changed, from the month of April, 2022.
From these results, we can see there were four commits to this database in October, 2020. Commits 224helo
only changed the dolt_schemas
table, commit 7jrvg1a
changed the dolt_docs
table, and commit 5jpgb0f
made changes to two tables. We can also see which of these tables had changes made to their schemas vs just data.
To dig deeper into these changes, we can query the dolt_diff_$TABLE
system tables specific to each of the changed tables, like this:
dolt_column_diff
dolt_column_diff
The dolt_column_diff
system table shows which columns and tables in the current database were changed in each commit reachable from the active branch's HEAD. When multiple columns are changed in a single commit, there is one row in the dolt_column_diff
system table for each column, all with the same commit hash. Any staged changes in the working set are included with the value STAGED
for their commit_hash
. Any unstaged changes in the working set are included with the value WORKING
for their commit_hash
.
Schema
The DOLT_COLUMN_DIFF
system table has the following columns
Query Details
dolt_column_diff
displays the changes from the current branch HEAD, including any working set changes. If a commit did not make any changes to tables (e.g. an empty commit), it is not included in the dolt_column_diff
results.
Example Query
Taking the first-hour-db
database from DoltHub as our example, the following query uses the dolt_column_diff
system table to find commits, and tables where the name was updated.
If we narrow in on the dolt_schemas
table we can count the number of commits that updated each column over the course of all our commits.
From these results, we can see that fields describing the reasons an inmate is being held are being updated far more frequently than the fields holding demographic information about inmates.
dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
For every user table named $TABLENAME
, there is a read-only system table named dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
that returns a list of diffs showing how rows have changed over time on the current branch. Each row in the result set represents a row that has changed between two adjacent commits on the current branch – if a row has been updated in 10 commits, then 10 individual rows are returned, showing each of the 10 individual updates.
Compared to the dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
system table, the dolt_diff_$TABLENAME
system table focuses on how a particular row has evolved over time in the current branch's history. The major differences are that dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
requires specifying from_commit
and to_commit
, works on any commits in the database (not just the current branch), and returns a single combined diff for all changes to a row between those two commits. In the example above where a row is changed 10 times, dolt_commit_diff_$TABLENAME
would only return a single row showing the diff, instead of the 10 individual deltas.
Schema
Every Dolt diff table will have the columns
The remaining columns are dependent on the schema of the user table at the current branch. For every column X
in your table at the current branch there will be columns in the result set named from_X
and to_X
with the same type as X
.
Example Schema
For a table named states
with the following schema:
The schema for dolt_diff_states
would be:
Query Details
A SELECT *
query for a diff table will show you every change that has occurred to each row for every commit in this branch's history. Using to_commit
or from_commit
will limit the data to specific commits. There is one special to_commit
value WORKING
which can be used to see what changes are in the working set that have yet to be committed to HEAD. It is often useful to use the HASHOF()
function to get the commit hash of a branch, or an ancestor commit. For example, to get the differences between the last commit and its parent you could use to_commit=HASHOF('HEAD') and from_commit=HASHOF('HEAD^')
For each row the field diff_type
will be one of the values added
, modified
, or removed
. You can filter which rows appear in the result set to one or more of those diff_type
values in order to limit which types of changes will be returned.
Example Query
Taking the dolthub/us-jails
database from DoltHub as our example, the following query will retrieve the jails whose total num_inmates_rated_for have changed the most between 2 versions.
Working Set Metadata System Tables
dolt_conflicts
dolt_conflicts
dolt_conflicts is a system table that has a row for every table in the working set that has an unresolved merge conflict.
Query this table when resolving conflicts in a SQL session. For more information on resolving merge conflicts in SQL, see docs for the dolt_conflicts_$TABLENAME tables.
dolt_conflicts_$TABLENAME
dolt_conflicts_$TABLENAME
For each table $TABLENAME
in conflict after a merge, there is a corresponding system table named dolt_conflicts_$TABLENAME
. The schema of each such table contains three columns for each column in the actual table, representing each row in conflict for each of ours, theirs, and base values.
Consider a table mytable
with this schema:
If we attempt a merge that creates conflicts in this table, I can examine them with the following query:
To mark conflicts as resolved, delete them from the corresponding table. To effectively keep all our
values, I would simply run:
If I wanted to keep all their
values, I would first run this statement:
For convenience, you can also modify the our_
columns of the dolt_conflicts_mytable
to update the corresponding row in mytable
. The above replace statement can be rewritten as:
And of course you can use any combination of ours
, theirs
and base
rows in these statements.
Notes
Updates made to the
our_
columns are applied to the original table using the primary key (or keyless hash). If the row does not exist, it will be inserted. Updates made toour_
columns will never delete a row, however.dolt_conflict_id
is a unique identifier for the conflict. It is particulary useful when writing software that needs to resolve conflicts automatically.from_root_ish
is the commit hash of the "from branch" of the merge. This hash can be used to identify which merge produced a conflict, since conflicts can accumalate across merges.
dolt_schema_conflicts
dolt_schema_conflicts
dolt_schema_conflicts is a system table that has a row for every table in the working set that has an unresolved schema conflict.
Query this table when resolving schema conflicts in a SQL session. For more information on resolving schema conflicts during merge, see the docs on conflicts.
dolt_merge_status
dolt_merge_status
The dolt_merge_status system table tells a user if a merge is active. It has the following schema:
Example
Let's create a simple conflict:
Output of SELECT * from dolt_merge_status;
:
dolt_status
dolt_status
dolt_status
returns the status of the database session, analogous to running dolt status
from the command line.
Schema
Example Query
Constraint Violation System Tables
dolt_constraint_violations
dolt_constraint_violations
The dolt_constraint_violations
system table contains one row for every table that has a constraint violation introduced by a merge. Dolt enforces constraints (such as foreign keys) during normal SQL operations, but it's possible that a merge puts one or more tables in a state where constraints no longer hold. For example, a row deleted in the merge base could be referenced via a foreign key constraint by an added row in the merged commit. Use dolt_constraint_violations
to discover such violations.
Schema
dolt_constraint_violations_$TABLENAME
dolt_constraint_violations_$TABLENAME
For each table $TABLENAME
with a constraint violation after a merge, there is a corresponding system table named dolt_constraint_violations_$TABLENAME
. Each row in the table represents a constraint violation that must be resolved via INSERT
, UPDATE
, or DELETE
statements. Resolve each constraint violation before committing the result of the merge that introduced them.
Schema
For a hypothetical table a
with the following schema:
dolt_constraint_violations_a
will have the following schema:
Each row in the table represents a row in the primary table that is in violation of one or more constraint violations. The violation_info
field is a JSON payload describing the violation.
As with dolt_conflicts
, delete rows from the corresponding dolt_constraint_violations
table to signal to Doltgres that you have resolved any such violations before committing.
Configuration Tables
Configuration Tables can be staged and versioned just like user tables. They always exist, even in an empty database.
dolt_ignore
dolt_ignore
dolt_ignore
stores a list of "table name patterns", and a boolean flag for each pattern indicating whether tables that match the patterns should not be staged for commit.
This only affects the staging of new tables. Tables that have already been staged or committed are not affected the contents of dolt_ignore
, and changes to those tables can still be staged.
Schema
Notes
The format of patterns is a simplified version of gitignore’s patterns:
An asterisk "*" or ampersand "%" matches any number of characters.
The character "?" matches any one character.
All other characters match exactly.
If a table name matches multiple patterns with different values for ignored
, the most specific pattern is chosen (a pattern A is more specific than a pattern B if all names that match A also match pattern B, but not vice versa.) If no pattern is most specific, then attempting to stage that table will result in an error.
Tables that match patterns in dolt_ignore
can be force-committed by passing the --force
flag to SELECT dolt_add
.
dolt_diff
won't display ignored tables unless the additional --ignored
flag is passed.
Example Query
Rebasing Tables
dolt_rebase
dolt_rebase
dolt_rebase
is only present while an interactive rebase is in progress, and only on the branch where the rebase is being executed. For example, when rebasing the feature1
branch, the rebase will be executed on the dolt_rebase_feature1
branch, and the dolt_rebase
system table will exist on that branch while the rebase is in-progress. The dolt_rebase
system table starts off with the default rebase plan, which is to pick
all of the commits identified for the rebase. Users can adjust the rebase plan by updating the dolt_rebase
table to change the rebase action, reword a commit message, or even add new rows with additional commits to be applied as part of the rebase. For more details about rebasing, see the dolt_rebase()
stored procedure.
Schema
The action
field can take one of the following rebase actions:
pick
- apply a commit as is and keep its commit message.drop
- do not apply a commit. The row in thedolt_rebase
table can also be deleted to drop a commit from the rebase plan.reword
- apply a commit, and use the updated commit message from thecommit_message
field in thedolt_rebase
table for its commit message. Note that if you edit thecommit_message
but do not use thereword
action, the original commit message will still be used.squash
- apply a commit, but include its changes in the previous commit instead of creating a new commit. The commit message of the previous commit will be altered to include the previous commit message as well as the commit message from the squashed commit. Note that the rebase plan MUST include apick
orreword
action in the plan before asquash
action.fixup
- apply a commit, but include its changes in the previous commit instead of creating a new commit. The commit message of the previous commit will NOT be changed, and the commit message from the fixup commit will be discarded. Note that the rebase plan MUST include apick
orreword
action in the plan before afixup
action.
Example Queries
To squash all commits into a single commit and include the commit messages from all commits, the following query can be used:
To reword a commit with commit hash '123aef456f', be sure to set the action to reword
and to update the commit_message
field:
To drop the second commit in the rebase plan, you can use the drop
action:
Or you can simply delete that row from the dolt_rebase
table:
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