I ntroducon to MemSQL Sharded and Reference tables MemSQL supports both distributed (or sharded) and reference (or duplicated) tables. Both table formats can be as rowstore or columnstore tables. For sharded tables, the primary key acts as the hash and each shard is stored on the respecve leaf nodes. For reference tables, the table is replicated to all nodes (including aggregators) and is well suited for smaller, slowly changing tables. Figure 13. Sharded vs Reference Table designsData Types MemSQL supports a variety of data types, including integers, mestamp, string types like CHAR and VARCHAR, and compound types such as computed columns, ENUM and SET. Addional complex data types that are supported include geospaal, full text (search capability), and semi-structured JSON data. Parallel Data Ingest with Pipelines MemSQL Pipelines is a MemSQL database feature that ingests data from external sources in a connuous manner. As a built-in component of the database, Pipelines can extract, transform, and load external data without the need for third-party tools or middleware. 19