vectra: Columnar Query Engine for Larger-than-RAM Data

A minimal columnar query engine with lazy execution on datasets larger than RAM. Provides 'dplyr'-like verbs (filter(), select(), mutate(), group_by(), summarise(), joins, window functions) and common aggregations (n(), sum(), mean(), min(), max(), sd(), first(), last()) backed by a pure C11 pull-based execution engine and a custom on-disk format ('.vtr').

Version: 0.5.1
Depends: R (≥ 4.1.0)
Imports: tidyselect, rlang
Suggests: bit64, knitr, openxlsx2, rmarkdown, testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
Published: 2026-04-21
DOI: 10.32614/CRAN.package.vectra
Author: Gilles Colling ORCID iD [aut, cre, cph]
Maintainer: Gilles Colling <gilles.colling051 at gmail.com>
BugReports: https://github.com/gcol33/vectra/issues
License: MIT + file LICENSE
URL: https://gillescolling.com/vectra/, https://github.com/gcol33/vectra
NeedsCompilation: yes
SystemRequirements: GNU make
Materials: README, NEWS
CRAN checks: vectra results [issues need fixing before 2026-05-06]

Documentation:

Reference manual: vectra.html , vectra.pdf
Vignettes: vectra Engine Reference (source, R code)
Format Backends (source, R code)
Indexing and Query Optimization (source, R code)
Joins (source, R code)
Working with Large Data (source, R code)
Getting Started with vectra (source, R code)
Star Schemas and Lookup (source, R code)
String Operations and Fuzzy Matching (source, R code)

Downloads:

Package source: vectra_0.5.1.tar.gz
Windows binaries: r-devel: vectra_0.5.1.zip, r-release: vectra_0.5.1.zip, r-oldrel: vectra_0.5.1.zip
macOS binaries: r-release (arm64): vectra_0.5.1.tgz, r-oldrel (arm64): not available, r-release (x86_64): vectra_0.5.1.tgz, r-oldrel (x86_64): vectra_0.5.1.tgz

Linking:

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