Amazon Redshift extends Automatic Table Optimization to support Column Compression Encoding

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), extends Automatic Table Optimization to modify column compression encodings. This new capability maintains the optimal compression encodings in Amazon Redshift database tables on an ongoing basis to achieve high performance and reduce the storage utilization. By using automation to manage column compression, customers can ensure that column compression encodings are always optimized in order to get the best possible performance.

A compression encoding specifies the type of compression that is applied to data values in a column as rows are added to a table. Choosing the right encoding reduces the storage utilization of a column while improving the performance of queries that access the column. Currently, Amazon Redshift automatically picks the optimal column compression encodings based on a sample of data from S3. However as data changes over time or new compression encodings are introduced which may improve performance, there is a need to update column compression encodings to improve performance or reduce storage footprint. With this release, column compression will be continuously monitored and updated on an ongoing basis.

To take advantage of the feature, a user creates a new table with the CREATE statement or defines an existing table for encoding automation with the new ALTER TABLE table_name ENCODE AUTO command. If Amazon Redshift determines that changing encoding will improve cluster performance, tables will be automatically altered within hours from the time the cluster was launched, with minimal impact to queries. Thereafter, cluster data is evaluated continuously to determine if a more optimal compression will benefit cluster performance. To learn more about Amazon Redshift Automatic Table Optimization, see the documentation.

Automatic Table Optimization is available in all regions where the Amazon Redshift Advisor is available. Refer to the this link for Amazon Redshift Advisor availability.