.. ******************************************************************************
.. * Copyright 2019 Intel Corporation
.. *
.. * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
.. * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
.. * You may obtain a copy of the License at
.. *
.. *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
.. *
.. * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
.. * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
.. * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
.. * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
.. * limitations under the License.
.. *******************************************************************************/

Numeric Tables
==============

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   generic-interfaces.rst
   essential-interfaces.rst
   numeric-tables-types.rst

Effective data management is one of the key components for achieving good performance
in data analytics applications. |product| defines the ``NumericTable`` class
that is responsible for storage of and access to the datasets represented
in numeric format on the computational node:

- ``NumericTable`` does not track data available on other nodes.
  The logic that controls synchronization of data between nodes
  should be implemented on the application level.
- ``NumericTable`` does not accumulate information about data
  coming in streaming way. All necessary computations are done
  on the level of the |product| algorithm and/or application software.

The library supports the following data layouts:

-  Heterogeneous, Array Of Structures (AOS)
-  Heterogeneous, Structure Of Arrays (SOA)
-  Homogeneous, dense
-  Homogeneous matrix, dense
-  Homogeneous symmetric matrix, packed
-  Homogeneous triangular matrix, packed
-  Homogeneous, sparse CSR

The optimal data layout for homogeneous and heterogeneous numeric
tables highly depends on a particular algorithm. You can find
algorithm-specific guidance in the Performance Considerations section
for the appropriate algorithm.