What is a resident and when would you use it?

[ivandrago]

Hi,

I have seen the word Resident in scripts and just wanted to know what it is and when would you use it? Has anyone got any examples that I could play wih?

Thanks Ivan

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Ivan,

The 'Resident' keyword simply indicates that the table that you're loading data from already exists in the loaded data model.

For example, let's say I've loaded a fact table containing data about each time someone logged into my website. I've called that table 'Logins'. If I wanted to create a summary within the script of the si logins table, I could do so using the resident keyword:

Logins_Recency:
LOAD
USER_ID,
date(MAX(LOGIN_DATE)) AS LAST_LOGIN_DATE,
IF(CEIL((today() - MAX(LOGIN_DATE))/30)>=24,24,CEIL((today() - MAX(LOGIN_DATE))/30)) AS LOGIN_RECENCY_SEGMENT
RESIDENT Logins
GROUP BY USER_ID;

Note that 'Resident' here referrs to the 'Logins' table which appears earlier in my script.