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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-696?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15543681#comment-15543681
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Pei He commented on BEAM-696:
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For merging windows, DataflowPipelineRunner does "defer running anything that
looks up the combine side-input until it has grouped and merged windows".
For each fired pane, combine fn methods (such as addInput, mergeAccumulators,
extractOutput) will see the same side inputs. So, it is semantically consistent
for CombineFns.
Still, it is non-deterministic, because non-merging windows' trigger firing is
non-deterministic.
Action Item for me is "to clarify the semantic requirements for side inputs in
CombineFns".
> Side-Inputs non-deterministic with merging main-input windows
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: BEAM-696
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-696
> Project: Beam
> Issue Type: Bug
> Components: beam-model
> Reporter: Ben Chambers
> Assignee: Pei He
>
> Side-Inputs are non-deterministic for several reasons:
> 1. Because they depend on triggering of the side-input (this is acceptable
> because triggers are by their nature non-deterministic).
> 2. They depend on the current state of the main-input window in order to
> lookup the side-input. This means that with merging
> 3. Any runner optimizations that affect when the side-input is looked up may
> cause problems with either or both of these.
> This issue focuses on #2 -- the non-determinism of side-inputs that execute
> within a Merging WindowFn.
> Possible solution would be to defer running anything that looks up the
> side-input until we need to extract an output, and using the main-window at
> that point. Specifically, if the main-window is a MergingWindowFn, don't
> execute any kind of pre-combine, instead buffer all the inputs and combine
> later.
> This could still run into some non-determinism if there are triggers
> controlling when we extract output.
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