The Blaze readme (here https://github.com/ContinuumIO/blaze) describes a number of improvements over NumPy including "Synthetic Dimensions". I have searched around but have been unable to find out what they are.
Could someone enlighten me?
Thanks.
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4Didn't realise that project existed - so thanks - will have to keep an eye on that. However you may stand a better chance of an answer using their mailing list provided on the site? – Jon Clements Jan 02 '13 at 13:45
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2No problem, because Travis Oliphant left NumPy development to work on Blaze I thought it was big news. In hindsight a Blaze tag not existing on StackOverflow should have been a clue that it wasn't on many people's radar. Thanks for the advice regarding their mailing list, I will try there too. – Oliver Palmer Jan 02 '13 at 14:54
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A couple of caveats first. One, I work on the project and second these features are still in the planning stage so they are not implemented at this moment.
That being said a "synthetic dimension" in Blaze is much like a derived column in database. It is a value calculated formulaically from an expression in terms of other rows or columns but does not exist in physical memory or on disk.
In Blaze we trying to make these kind of columns ( especially for columnar data stores ) be able to be consumed by next generation ufunc objects that are able to calculate values in the computation from the synthetic dimensions as well as physical dimensions.
Hope that answers the question!
Stephen Diehl
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