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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-449?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12580923#action_12580923
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Chris Douglas commented on HADOOP-449:
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bq. Theoretically every job can/should use the filtering functionality, since 
there is no drawback but lots of benefits. So this necessitates that the 
InputFormats of every job should be FilterInputFormat, shading the real 
InputFormat under FilterInputFormat#setBaseInputFormat().

Even if every job can use the filtering functionality, integrating it into 
Task/MapTask limits where it may be applied. If, for example, one were reading 
from multiple sources, different sets of filters could be applied to each 
source. Similarly, a map or a reduce task could use a filtering record reader 
to read a subset of records indirectly. If it's limited to the interfaces you 
provide to MapTask, then this code can't be reused elsewhere. Again, since 
weaving it into core doesn't seem to give you extra functionality- it seems to 
make it less general- and there's zero performance hit, making it a library 
looks laced with win.

bq. There is a lot of legacy code which can benefit from this, but people will 
be reluctant (or lazy) to convert their job's input format to filter. So 
maximum usability and minimum code change should be aimed.

I disagree, and I cite your previous patch. Its interface was not only easier 
to understand than the postfix additions, but specifying the baseInputFormat 
was very intuitive. For users seeking to benefit from this, the difficulty 
delta between the library and Task implementations is so slight that I doubt 
it'll actually prevent someone from taking advantage of it.

bq. Although the functionality is at the core, we only change a few 
lines(except FilterRR) from the Task and MapTask classes, effectively 
encapsulating the functionality. We may extract FilterRecordReader to its own 
class, so that it is completely separate. I should note that join can readily 
use filtering. The filtering just filters before passing the record to the 
mapper, so the joined keys would be filtered.

Not exactly. If I apply a RangeFilter to each of my record readers, the join 
considers a smaller subset of the records read. Since it's generating the cross 
of all the matching records (i.e. sets A, B, C sharing key k and containing 
values x1, x2 would emit [a1, b1, c1], [a1, b1, c2], [a1, b2, c1], ... [a2, b2, 
c2]), my filter would have to reject the cross of all those records, rather 
than each individually. Further, if I only want to filter the records from B in 
the previous example, the filter in my map would need more state to ensure I'm 
not emitting duplicate records to the map (or my map code would have to deal 
with that). One can imagine other cases where, again, filtering shouldn't be 
limited to a single part of the job, or cases where it might change the result 
if filters can only be applied at a certain stage.

bq. However it is very unlikely that a user may implement a FunctionFilter, but 
it is quite likely that she can implement a Filter. Thus adding a stack 
argument that no filter uses seems confusing and unnecessary. Consider the 
javadoc for the stack argument in the Filter#accept() method being as "@param 
stack filters should not use this".
Though Filters will be useful, the semantics of a FunctionFilter aren't so 
mysterious that people won't want to write those, too. Again, the purpose of 
both parameters is easily explained, and people will decide whether they should 
employ them or not. It seems premature to decide that there are only two types 
of filters, anyway. It sounds like we agree that it's a cleaner interface with 
only one signature for the eval; I'm just not sure I see the extensibility 
benefit as clearly.

> Generalize the SequenceFileInputFilter to apply to any InputFormat
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: HADOOP-449
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-449
>             Project: Hadoop Core
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: mapred
>    Affects Versions: 0.17.0
>            Reporter: Owen O'Malley
>            Assignee: Enis Soztutar
>             Fix For: 0.17.0
>
>         Attachments: filtering_v2.patch, filtering_v3.patch, 
> filterinputformat_v1.patch
>
>
> I'd like to generalize the SequenceFileInputFormat that was introduced in 
> HADOOP-412 so that it can be applied to any InputFormat. To do this, I 
> propose:
> interface WritableFilter {
>    boolean accept(Writable item);
> }
> class FilterInputFormat implements InputFormat {
>   ...
> }
> FilterInputFormat would look in the JobConf for:
>    mapred.input.filter.source = the underlying input format
>    mapred.input.filter.filters = a list of class names that implement 
> WritableFilter
> The FilterInputFormat will work like the current SequenceFilter, but use an 
> internal RecordReader rather than the SequenceFile. This will require adding 
> a next(key) and getCurrentValue(value) to the RecordReader interface, but 
> that will be addressed in a different issue.

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