You can change it via the copy command officially. Unofficially, I wonder if making the directory a mount to another location works.

I would still recommend running it nightly but I would simply run it for all tables that you load data into during that day. You don't need to first check for stale statistics first.

If you are looking for a product to do it, I hear good things about Wisdomforce but I don't know if its a good fit for you. If you are looking for other ideas, can you batch the changes ... say every X minutes? Do you have PK definitions on your tables?

Just curious, how many rows in your table?

Ok - 5 will warn of stale statistics much more than 6 will because of the way Vertica changed collection. I would not worry about this too much in 6. On a side not, I would the latest 6 and not 6.0.0-1.

Which version of vertica?

Looking at the SSB one - do you know of published results for other databases?