Archive for the 'kdb+' Category
February 24th, 2016 by admin
First, in case you haven’t heard about it kdb has a standard SQL mode, you can send queries prefixed with s) and they will be interpreted as standard SQL like so:
Notice how the standard “and” syntax worked when I used s) but without it, q’s right to left evaluation causes problems. It’s about now that a lot of people get very excited, they think great I can skip learning that q-sql and use my standard SQL. Sometimes the look of joy on their faces transforms to frustration once they start using it. So let’s look at what works:
Operation |
Works? |
Standard SQL Inserts |
Yes |
ORDER BY |
half works |
COUNT |
Yes |
DELETE |
Yes |
UPDATE |
Yes |
String matching |
slightly works |
NOT |
NO |
IN |
Yes |
GROUP BY |
Yes |
LIMIT / TOP |
NO |
Date Times |
NO |
Standard SQL Inserts work
ORDER BY half works
“ORDER BY” will sort the columns in ascending order, attempting to use DESC has no effect.
COUNT works
DELETE works
UPDATE works
String matching slightly works
NOT fails
Modifying our String query slightly by adding NOT throws an error. My guess is that the interpreter has got confused.
IN works
GROUP BY works
LIMIT / TOP does not work
Date Times Don’t Work Right
Overall standard SQL support in kdb has got much better. However I would still recommend only using the s) syntax for plugging into an existing jdbc/odbc visualization tool and getting some immediate simple results. For any form of complex queries on strings, joins etc. support is either not there or the result may not be what you expect.
February 15th, 2016 by admin
qStudio 1.40 is now available to download.
The latest changes include:
- No need to save changes before shutdown, unsaved changes stored till reopened.
- Add sqlchart to system path.
- Fix display of tables with underscore in the name.
- Database documenter/report enhancements
- Improved code printing
- FileTreePanel much more efficient at displaying large number of files.
November 5th, 2015 by John Dempster
Previously on our blog we had a lively debate about a possibly Open Sourced kdb+ , unfortunately kx now seems to be moving the opposite direction. In a recent announcement they are now restricting “32-bit kdb+ for non-commercial use only”. The timing is particularly unfortunate as:
Alternative (far less enterprise proven) solutions are available:
- MAN AHL have released Arctic an open source Market Data platform based on python and MongoDB
- Kerf Database – A DB aimed at the same market as kdb has now partnered with Briarcliff-Hall and is making greater sales inroads
This renewed interest in kdb alternatives hasn’t so far delivered a kdb+ killer but I fear in time it will.
May 2nd, 2015 by admin
An intellij keyword file is now available to provide syntax highlighting of kdb code in intellij:

q Code Intellij Highlighting
To install it copy this xml file to this directory:
C:\Users\USERNAME\.IdeaIC14\config\filetypes
Where USERNAME is obviously your username. Then restart intellij and open a .q file.
We’ve updated our notepad++ qlang.xml to provide code folding and highlighting of the .Q/.z namespaces.
May 2nd, 2015 by admin
We’ve now posted all source code from this website on our github kdb page.
Additionally we are open sourcing qunit, our kdb testing framework.
We look forward to receiving pull requests to fix our (hopefully few) bugs.
April 23rd, 2015 by admin
Since our last qStudio kdb+ IDE announcment we have added a lot of new features:

Bulk importing kdb server lists
There’s a lot of new features to allow supporting a huge number of servers efficiently:
- Support importing HUGE number of servers:
- 5000+ server connections are now supported
- To prevent massive memory use, the object tree for a server is no longer refreshed at startup only on connection.
- Allow specifying default username/password once for all servers
- Allow nested connection folders
- Add critical color option – servers with prod in name get highlighted in red
- Sort File Tree Alphabetically
- Numerous bugfixes including:
- Fix critical Mac bug that prevented launching in some instances
- Fix query cancelling
January 19th, 2015 by Ryan Hamilton
In a world overran with open source big data solutions is kdb+ going to be left behind? I hope not…
Every few weeks someone comes to me with a big data problem often with a half-done mongoDB/NoSQL solution that they “want a little help with”. Usually after looking at it I think to myself
“I could solve this in 20 minutes with 5 lines of q code”
But how do I tell someone they should use a system which may end up costing them £1,000s per core in licensing costs. Yes it’s great that there’s a free 32-bit trial version but the risk that you may end up needing the 64-bit is too great a risk.

Given the ever-increasing number of NoSQL solutions and in particular the rising popularity of Hadoop, R, python and MongoDB it’s not hard to see that open-source is taking over the world. Right now kdb+ still has the edge, that it’s faster, sleeker, sexier..but I don’t think that will save it in the long run. The power of open-source is that it let’s everyone contribute, witness the 100’s of libraries available for R, the 1000’s of javascript frameworks. The truly sad thing is that it’s not always the best underlying technology that wins. A 1000 amateurs creating a vibrant ecosystem of plug-ins, add-ons, tutorials… can beat other technologies through sheer force of numbers.
- APL was a great language yet it remains relegated to history while PHP flourishes.
- PostgreSQL was technically superior to MySQL yet MySQL is deployed everywhere
I believe kdb+ is the best solution to a large number of “big data” problems (small data to kdb+), When you stop and think, time-series data is everywhere, open sourcing kdb+ would open up entirely new sectors to kdb+ and I hope it’s a step kx take before it’s too late.
What do you think? Leave your comments below.
October 20th, 2014 by admin
Based on user requests we have released a number of new features with qStudio 1.36:
Download the latest ->qStudio<- now.
Dark Code Editor Themes

Which can be set under settings->preferences

Open Results and Charts in New Window
To expand a panel into a new window click the “pop-out” icon.

This will bring up the result in a new window:

UTF-8 Chinese Language Support

October 8th, 2014 by admin
kdb+ London Contract – £800 p/day
kdb+ belfast Citigroup Contract £400 p/day
Java Poland £150 p/day

September 8th, 2014 by admin
sqlDashboards are included as a bundle with qStudio, part of that package is a command line utility called sqlChart that allows generating customized sql charts from the command line.
Checkout the video to see how you can create a chart based on data from a kdb+ database in 2 minutes:
The sqlChart page has all the documentation you need, Download the qstudio.zip to try it now.
The q Code
Help Screen