Materialization#

How Interlace persists model results.

Materialization Types#

Table#

Creates a physical table in the database:

@model(name="users", materialise="table")
def users(raw_users: ibis.Table) -> ibis.Table:
    return raw_users.filter(...)

Best for:

• Frequently accessed data
• Data that needs to be queried by other tools
• Final outputs

View#

Creates a database view (no physical storage):

@model(name="user_summary", materialise="view")
def user_summary(users: ibis.Table) -> ibis.Table:
    return users.group_by(users.region).agg(count=users.id.count())

Best for:

• Lightweight transformations
• Data that changes with underlying tables
• Reducing storage costs

Ephemeral#

Creates a temporary table for the duration of the run:

@model(name="intermediate", materialise="ephemeral")
def intermediate(source: ibis.Table) -> ibis.Table:
    return source.filter(...)

Best for:

• Intermediate transformations
• Data only needed during pipeline execution
• Complex multi-step transformations

None#

No output is persisted. The model function runs but nothing is written to the database:

@model(name="notify", materialise="none")
def notify(alerts: ibis.Table) -> None:
    for row in alerts.execute().to_dict(orient="records"):
        send_notification(row)

Best for:

• Side-effect models (notifications, API calls, external writes)
• Models that push data to external systems

Choosing a Materialization#