How to enable AlloyBD Omni columnar engine?

Question

Using AlloyDB Omni 0.2.0 installed locally (followed docs) on Ubuntu 22.04. The DB is up and running, so I loaded some data and wanted to add a table to the column store, like here. Unfortunately, I got an error saying

google_columnar_engine module must be loaded via shared_preload_libraries and google_columnar_engine.enabled must be turned on.

The docs only mention how to set this flag on the cloud instance (using UI or console), but there is not a single word on how to do it using the Omni version.

Did anyone manage to make it work?

Answer 1

The google_columnar_engine should already be present in the shared_preload_libraries as part of the default Omni install. So the only piece that's left is you need to set the variable on the DB (ignore the discussion about "flags", it's just a session variable).

So you should be able to do:

SET SESSION "google_columnar_engine.enabled" = 'on';

And that'll enable the columnar engine, and then you can configure it.