How do I use a compressed columnar store in Spark SQL? - sql

Objective:
I'd like to user Spark on a sparse dataset. I understand that SparkSQL now supports columnar data stores (I believe via SchemaRDD). I've been told that compression of the columnar store is implemented but currently turned off by default.
I can make sure that Spark is store my my dataset as a compressed, in memory, columnar store?
What I've Tried:
At the Spark Summit, someone told me that I have to turn on compression as follows:
conf.set("spark.sql.inMemoryStorage.compressed", "true")
However, doing so doesn't seem to make any difference in my memory footprint.
The following are snippets of my test code:
case class Record(i: Int, j: Int)
...
val conf = new SparkConf().setAppName("Simple Application")
conf.set("spark.sql.inMemoryStorage.compressed", "true")
val sc = new SparkContext(conf)
val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
import sqlContext._
val records = // create an RDD of 1M Records
val table = createSchemaRDD(records)
table.cache
In one case, I create records so that all the values of i and j are unique. In this case, I see that 89.4MB are used.
In a second case, I create records so that most of the values of i and j are 0. (Roughly 99.9% of the entries are 0). In this case, I see that 43.0MB are used.
I expected a much higher compression ratio. Is there something I should do differently?
Thanks for the help.

The setting you want to use in Spark 1.0.2 is:
spark.sql.inMemoryColumnarStorage.compressed
Just set it to "true". I do it in my conf/spark-defaults.conf.
Just verified that this yields smaller memory footprint.

sqlContext.cacheTable is needed. .cache will not cache the table with the in-memory columnar store.

Related

Is there an idiomatic way to cache Spark dataframes?

I have a large parquet dataset that I am reading with Spark. Once read, I filter for a subset of rows which are used in a number of functions that apply different transformations:
The following is similar but not exact logic to what I'm trying to accomplish:
df = spark.read.parquet(file)
special_rows = df.filter(col('special') > 0)
# Thinking about adding the following line
special_rows.cache()
def f1(df):
new_df_1 = df.withColumn('foo', lit(0))
return new_df_1
def f2(df):
new_df_2 = df.withColumn('foo', lit(1))
return new_df_2
new_df_1 = f1(special_rows)
new_df_2 = f2(special_rows)
output_df = new_df_1.union(new_df_2)
output_df.write.parquet(location)
Because a number of functions might be using this filtered subset of rows, I'd like to cache or persist it in order to potentially speed up execution speed / memory consumption. I understand that in the above example, there is no action called until my final write to parquet.
My questions is, do I need to insert some sort of call to count(), for example, in order to trigger the caching, or if Spark during that final write to parquet call will be able to see that this dataframe is being used in f1 and f2 and will cache the dataframe itself.
If yes, is this an idiomatic approach? Does this mean in production and large scale Spark jobs that rely on caching, random operations that force an action on the dataframe pre-emptively are frequently used, such as a call to count?
there is no action called until my final write to parquet.
and
Spark during that final write to parquet call will be able to see that this dataframe is being used in f1 and f2 and will cache the dataframe itself.
are correct. If you do output_df.explain(), you will see the query plan, which will show that what you said is correct.
Thus, there is no need to do special_rows.cache(). Generally, cache is only necessary if you intend to reuse the dataframe after forcing Spark to calculate something, e.g. after write or show. If you see yourself intentionally calling count(), you're probably doing something wrong.
You might want to repartition after running special_rows = df.filter(col('special') > 0). There can be a large number of empty partitions after running a filtering operation, as explained here.
The new_df_1 will make cache special_rows which will be reused by new_df_2 here new_df_1.union(new_df_2). That's not necessarily a performance optimization. Caching is expensive. I've seen caching slow down a lot of computations, even when it's being used in a textbook manner (i.e. caching a DataFrame that gets reused several times downstream).
Counting does not necessarily make sure the data is cached. Counts avoid scanning rows whenever possible. They'll use the Parquet metadata when they can, which means they don't cache all the data like you might expect.
You can also "cache" data by writing it to disk. Something like this:
df.filter(col('special') > 0).repartition(500).write.parquet("some_path")
special_rows = spark.read.parquet("some_path")
To summarize, yes, the DataFrame will be cached in this example, but it's not necessarily going to make your computation run any faster. It might be better to have no cache or to "cache" by writing data to disk.

Dask not recovering partitions from simple (non-Hive) Parquet files

I have a two-part question about Dask+Parquet. I am trying to run queries on a dask dataframe created from a partitioned Parquet file as so:
import pandas as pd
import dask.dataframe as dd
import fastparquet
##### Generate random data to Simulate Process creating a Parquet file ######
test_df = pd.DataFrame(data=np.random.randn(10000, 2), columns=['data1', 'data2'])
test_df['time'] = pd.bdate_range('1/1/2000', periods=test_df.shape[0], freq='1S')
# some grouping column
test_df['name'] = np.random.choice(['jim', 'bob', 'jamie'], test_df.shape[0])
##### Write to partitioned parquet file, hive and simple #####
fastparquet.write('test_simple.parquet', data=test_df, partition_on=['name'], file_scheme='simple')
fastparquet.write('test_hive.parquet', data=test_df, partition_on=['name'], file_scheme='hive')
# now check partition sizes. Only Hive version works.
assert test_df.name.nunique() == dd.read_parquet('test_hive.parquet').npartitions # works.
assert test_df.name.nunique() == dd.read_parquet('test_simple.parquet').npartitions # !!!!FAILS!!!
My goal here is to be able to quickly filter and process individual partitions in parallel using dask, something like this:
df = dd.read_parquet('test_hive.parquet')
df.map_partitions(<something>) # operate on each partition
I'm fine with using the Hive-style Parquet directory, but I've noticed it takes significantly longer to operate on compared to directly reading from a single parquet file.
Can someone tell me the idiomatic way to achieve this? Still fairly new to Dask/Parquet so apologies if this is a confused approach.
Maybe it wasn't clear from the docstring, but partitioning by value simply doesn't happen for the "simple" file type, which is why it only has one partition.
As for speed, reading the data in one single function call is fastest when the data are so small - especially if you intend to do any operation such as nunique which will require a combination of values from different partitions.
In Dask, every task incurs an overhead, so unless the amount of work being done by the call is large compared to that overhead, you can lose out. In addition, disk access is not generally parallelisable, and some parts of the computation may not be able to run in parallel in threads if they hold the GIL. Finally, the partitioned version contains more parquet metadata to be parsed.
>>> len(dd.read_parquet('test_hive.parquet').name.nunique())
12
>>> len(dd.read_parquet('test_simple.parquet').name.nunique())
6
TL;DR: make sure your partitions are big enough to keep dask busy.
(note: the set of unique values is already apparent from the parquet metadata, it shouldn't be necessary to load the data at all; but Dask doesn't know how to do this optimisation since, after all, some of the partitions may contain zero rows)

Avoiding shuffle on GROUP BY in Spark SQL [duplicate]

I want to know if Spark knows the partitioning key of the parquet file and uses this information to avoid shuffles.
Context:
Running Spark 2.0.1 running local SparkSession. I have a csv dataset that I am saving as parquet file on my disk like so:
val df0 = spark
.read
.format("csv")
.option("header", true)
.option("delimiter", ";")
.option("inferSchema", false)
.load("SomeFile.csv"))
val df = df0.repartition(partitionExprs = col("numerocarte"), numPartitions = 42)
df.write
.mode(SaveMode.Overwrite)
.format("parquet")
.option("inferSchema", false)
.save("SomeFile.parquet")
I am creating 42 partitions by column numerocarte. This should group multiple numerocarte to same partition. I don't want to do partitionBy("numerocarte") at the write time because I don't want one partition per card. It would be millions of them.
After that in another script I read this SomeFile.parquet parquet file and do some operations on it. In particular I am running a window function on it where the partitioning is done on the same column that the parquet file was repartitioned by.
import org.apache.spark.sql.expressions.Window
import org.apache.spark.sql.functions._
val df2 = spark.read
.format("parquet")
.option("header", true)
.option("inferSchema", false)
.load("SomeFile.parquet")
val w = Window.partitionBy(col("numerocarte"))
.orderBy(col("SomeColumn"))
df2.withColumn("NewColumnName",
sum(col("dollars").over(w))
After read I can see that the repartition worked as expected and DataFrame df2 has 42 partitions and in each of them are different cards.
Questions:
Does Spark know that the dataframe df2 is partitioned by column numerocarte?
If it knows, then there will be no shuffle in the window function. True?
If it does not know, It will do a shuffle in the window function. True?
If it does not know, how do I tell Spark the data is already partitioned by the right column?
How can I check a partitioning key of DataFrame? Is there a command for this? I know how to check number of partitions but how to see partitioning key?
When I print number of partitions in a file after each step, I have 42 partitions after read and 200 partitions after withColumn which suggests that Spark repartitioned my DataFrame.
If I have two different tables repartitioned with the same column, would the join use that information?
Does Spark know that the dataframe df2 is partitioned by column numerocarte?
It does not.
If it does not know, how do I tell Spark the data is already partitioned by the right column?
You don't. Just because you save data which has been shuffled, it does not mean, that it will be loaded with the same splits.
How can I check a partitioning key of DataFrame?
There is no partitioning key once you loaded data, but you can check queryExecution for Partitioner.
In practice:
If you want to support efficient pushdowns on the key, use partitionBy method of DataFrameWriter.
If you want a limited support for join optimizations use bucketBy with metastore and persistent tables.
See How to define partitioning of DataFrame? for detailed examples.
I am answering my own question for future reference what worked.
Following suggestion of #user8371915, bucketBy works!
I am saving my DataFrame df:
df.write
.bucketBy(250, "userid")
.saveAsTable("myNewTable")
Then when I need to load this table:
val df2 = spark.sql("SELECT * FROM myNewTable")
val w = Window.partitionBy("userid")
val df3 = df2.withColumn("newColumnName", sum(col("someColumn")).over(w)
df3.explain
I confirm that when I do window functions on df2 partitioned by userid there is no shuffle! Thanks #user8371915!
Some things I learned while investigating it
myNewTable looks like a normal parquet file but it is not. You could read it normally with spark.read.format("parquet").load("path/to/myNewTable") but the DataFrame created this way will not keep the original partitioning! You must use spark.sql select to get correctly partitioned DataFrame.
You can look inside the table with spark.sql("describe formatted myNewTable").collect.foreach(println). This will tell you what columns were used for bucketing and how many buckets there are.
Window functions and joins that take advantage of partitioning often require also sort. You can sort data in your buckets at the write time using .sortBy() and the sort will be also preserved in the hive table. df.write.bucketBy(250, "userid").sortBy("somColumnName").saveAsTable("myNewTable")
When working in local mode the table myNewTable is saved to a spark-warehouse folder in my local Scala SBT project. When saving in cluster mode with mesos via spark-submit, it is saved to hive warehouse. For me it was located in /user/hive/warehouse.
When doing spark-submit you need to add to your SparkSession two options: .config("hive.metastore.uris", "thrift://addres-to-your-master:9083") and .enableHiveSupport(). Otherwise the hive tables you created will not be visible.
If you want to save your table to specific database, do spark.sql("USE your database") before bucketing.
Update 05-02-2018
I encountered some problems with spark bucketing and creation of Hive tables. Please refer to question, replies and comments in Why is Spark saveAsTable with bucketBy creating thousands of files?

spark works too slow on dataframe generated by mongodb spark connector

I used mongodb spark connector generated a dataframe from mongodb
val df1 = df.filter(df("dev.app").isNotNull).select("dev.app").limit(100)
It's a big collection, so I limit the row to 100.
when I use
df1.show()
it works fast.
But when I use
df1.count
to see the fist row of df1
the result is enter image description here
it is too slow.
Can anybody give me some suggestions?
I think you should try to tweak spark.sql.shuffle.partitions configuration. you may very small data but you are creating too many partitions by default it is 200
see this for info

How to set the number of partitions/nodes when importing data into Spark

Problem: I want to import data into Spark EMR from S3 using:
data = sqlContext.read.json("s3n://.....")
Is there a way I can set the number of nodes that Spark uses to load and process the data? This is an example of how I process the data:
data.registerTempTable("table")
SqlData = sqlContext.sql("SELECT * FROM table")
Context: The data is not too big, takes a long time to load into Spark and also to query from. I think Spark partitions the data into too many nodes. I want to be able to set that manually. I know when dealing with RDDs and sc.parallelize I can pass the number of partitions as an input. Also, I have seen repartition(), but I am not sure if it can solve my problem. The variable data is a DataFrame in my example.
Let me define partition more precisely. Definition one: commonly referred to as "partition key" , where a column is selected and indexed to speed up query (that is not what i want). Definition two: (this is where my concern is) suppose you have a data set, Spark decides it is going to distribute it across many nodes so it can run operations on the data in parallel. If the data size is too small, this may further slow down the process. How can i set that value
By default it partitions into 200 sets. You can change it by using set command in sql context sqlContext.sql("set spark.sql.shuffle.partitions=10");. However you need to set it with caution based up on your data characteristics.
You can call repartition() on dataframe for setting partitions. You can even set spark.sql.shuffle.partitions this property after creating hive context or by passing to spark-submit jar:
spark-submit .... --conf spark.sql.shuffle.partitions=100
or
dataframe.repartition(100)
Number of "input" partitions are fixed by the File System configuration.
1 file of 1Go, with a block size of 128M will give you 10 tasks. I am not sure you can change it.
repartition can be very bad, if you have lot of input partitions this will make lot of shuffle (data traffic) between partitions.
There is no magic method, you have to try, and use the webUI to see how many tasks are generated.