We are happy to share that you can now create Materialized Views (MVs) within the Tinybird UI!
What changed?
Previously, MVs could only be created in the Tinybird CLI. This wasn’t as easy as it should have been, for a few reasons:
- You needed specific ClickHouse expertise to create a MV.
- You were responsible for choosing the right parameters for the MV.
- If you prefer the UI, creating an MV threw a wrench in your dev flow.
By allowing you to create and manage your MVs within the Tinybird UI, we hope to make creating MVs more comfortable for UI power users, while also taking the extra step of determining the right parameters for your MV automatically.
Why does this matter?
Materialized Views are fundamental to creating performant endpoints. They have the potential to massively reduce query response time and scan size.
Put simply, Materialized Views shrink the amount of data over which subsequent queries are performed. This not only serves insightful data to your users faster, but also reduces your usage bill.
By allowing you to create MVs in the Tinybird UI, we’re making it easier for you to generate faster, cheaper endpoints for your applications.
How does this work in Tinybird?
Materialization in Tinybird relies on using Pipes to create a new (materialized) Data Source. In a nutshell, the simplified process looks like this:
- Create a Pipe to define the pre-aggregated or filtered results you’d like to query over.
- From the final Pipe node, select “Create Materialized View from this node.”
- Adjust, if necessary, the default Materialized View settings
- Create your Materialized View! 💥 You now have a new Data Source you can use in subsequent Pipes.
The process of creating an MV in the Tinybird UI is super easy, and MVs in Tinybird have some cool features that help guarantee performance, like:
- The UI partially populates the MV on create, so you can validate results faster.
- If needed, you can easily populate your MV with all existing data, too.
- The UI automatically recommends the best MV parameters for most cases – you can always refine them if needed.
- Tinybird materializes results on the fly and incrementally, so you can create it, forget it, and trust that your Materialized Data Source is always real-time.
Getting started with Materialized Views in Tinybird
If you haven’t created a Materialized View in Tinybird, give it a shot in the UI. Find your slowest endpoint, and test how a pre-aggregated Materialized View Data Source could minimize query time and scan size.
For a more in depth explanation of how to understand and create MVs in the UI, plus tips and tricks on how to use MVs for better endpoint performance, check out our guide on Materialized Views.
