Handling Real-Time Updates in ClickHouse

Handling Real-Time Updates in ClickHouse

Mutable data is generally unwelcome in OLAP databases. ClickHouse is no exception to the rule. Like some other OLAP products, ClickHouse did not even support updates originally. Later on, updates were added, but like many other things they were added in a “ClickHouse way.”

Even now, ClickHouse updates are asynchronous, which makes them difficult to use in interactive applications. Still, in many use cases users need to apply modifications to existing data and expect to see the effect immediately. Can ClickHouse do that? Sure it can.

Updates and Deletes in ClickHouse

Updates and Deletes in ClickHouse

Oct 16, 2018

It’s been two years already ago when ClickHouse development team published an excellent blog post “How to update data in ClickHouse”. In that old times ClickHouse supported only monthly partitions, and for mutable data structures, they suggested to use pretty exotic data structures. We were all waiting for a more convenient approach, and finally, it is there: ClickHouse now supports updates in deletes! In this article, we will see how it works.