Vector is a relational database with SQL access based on Ingres Database. The higher software layers—the layer database administrators, database users, or database applications interact with, such as management tools and the JDBC API—are identical to the traditional Ingres Database.

The difference from traditional Ingres is that the data is stored in Vector tables. This data is processed using the specialized Vector engine, allowing much higher performance for analytical database tasks.

Although it is possible to have both Vector and Ingres Database installations on the same server, this is not desirable. We recommend that Vector be installed on a dedicated server.

While a database can contain a mixture of both Vector and traditional Ingres tables, Vector does not support mixing both types of tables in the same query. You can, however, easily move data between Ingres and Vector tables directly and also create tables in traditional Ingres or Vector using CREATE TABLE AS SELECT or INSERT...SELECT statements.