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Overview

Multimodal Table extends the Append Table with capabilities for storing and querying multimodal data — images, videos, audio, vectors, and full-text content — all within a single table. It is built on top of the Data Evolution mode, which enables efficient partial column updates and schema evolution without rewriting entire data files.

Key capabilities:

  • Data Evolution: Update partial columns without rewriting entire files, enabling efficient schema evolution.
  • Variant Storage: Store and query schema-flexible semi-structured data with optional typed sub-column shredding.
  • Blob Storage: Store large binary objects (images, videos, audio) in dedicated .blob files with efficient column projection.
  • Vector Storage: Store and manage vector embeddings in dedicated Vortex-format files optimized for vector workloads.
  • Global Index: Build BTree, Bitmap, Multivalue, FM, vector, and full-text indexes for efficient lookups, exact substring filtering, and similarity search.

Data Evolution, Blob Storage, Vector Storage, and Global Index require the following table properties. Variant Storage can also be used in a regular Paimon table without these properties:

'row-tracking.enabled' = 'true',
'data-evolution.enabled' = 'true'