Hi all,

We had a discussion with Kenn yesterday about point 1 bellow, I would like to note it here on the ML:

Using new method timer.set() instead of timer.setForNowPlus() makes the timer fire at the right time.

Another thing, regarding point 2: if I inject the window in the @Ontimer method and print it, I see that at the moment the timer fires (at last timestamp of the window), the window is the GlobalWindow. I guess that is because the fixed window has just ended. Maybe the empty bagState that I get here is due to the end of window (passing to the GlobalWindow). I mean, as the states are scoped per window, and the window is different, then another bagState instance gets injected. Hence the empty bagState

WDYT?

I will open a PR even if this work is not finished yet, that way, we will have a convenient environment for discussing this code.

Etienne

Le 03/03/2017 à 11:48, Etienne Chauchot a écrit :
Hi all,

@Kenn: I have enhanced my streaming test in https://github.com/echauchot/beam/tree/BEAM-135-BATCHING-PARDO in particular to check that BatchingParDo doesn't mess up windows. It seems that it actually does :)

The input collection contains 10 elements timestamped at 1s interval and it is divided into fixed windows of 5s duration (so 2 windows). startTime is epoch. The timer is used to detect the end of the window and output the content of the batch (buffer) then.

I added some logs and I noticed two strange things (that might be linked):


1-The timer is set twice, and it is set correctly

INFOS: ***** SET TIMER ***** Delay of 4999 ms added to timestamp 1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z set for window [1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z..1970-01-01T00:00:05.000Z)

INFOS: ***** SET TIMER ***** Delay of 4999 ms added to timestamp 1970-01-01T00:00:05.000Z set for window [1970-01-01T00:00:05.000Z..1970-01-01T00:00:10.000Z)

It correctly fires twice but not at the right timeStamp:

INFOS: ***** END OF WINDOW ***** for timer timestamp 1970-01-01T00:00:04.999Z

=>Correct

INFOS: ***** END OF WINDOW ***** for timer timestamp 1970-01-01T00:00:04.999Z

=> Incorrect (should fire at timestamp 1970-01-01T00:00:09.999Z)

Do I need to call timer.cancel() after the timer has fired ? But timer.cancel() is not supported by DirectRunner yet.



2- in @OnTimer method the injected batch bagState parameter is empty whereas it was added some elements since last batch.clear() while processing the same window

INFOS: ***** BATCH ***** clear

INFOS: ***** BATCH ***** Add element for window [1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z..1970-01-01T00:00:05.000Z)

INFOS: ***** BATCH ***** Add element for window [1970-01-01T00:00:00.000Z..1970-01-01T00:00:05.000Z)
..
INFOS: ***** END OF WINDOW ***** for timer timestamp 1970-01-01T00:00:04.999Z
INFOS: ***** IN ONTIMER ***** batch size 0

Am I doing something wrong with timers or is there something not totally finished with them (as you noticed they are quite new)?

WDYT?


Thanks

Etienne


Le 09/02/2017 à 09:55, Etienne Chauchot a écrit :
Hi,

@JB: good to know for the roadmap! thanks

@Kenn: just to be clear: the timer fires fine. What I noticed is that it seems to be SET more than once because timer.setForNowPlus in called the @ProcessElement method. I am not 100% sure of it, what I noticed is that it started to work fine when I ensured to call timer.setForNowPlus only once. I don't say it's a bug, this is just not what I understood when I read the javadoc, I understood that it would be set only once per window, see javadoc bellow:

An implementation of Timer is implicitly scoped - it may be scoped to a key and window, or a key, window, and trigger, etc. A timer exists in one of two states: set or unset. A timer can be set only for a single time per scope.

I use the DirectRunner.

For the key part: ok, makes sense.

Thanks for your comments

I'm leaving on vacation tonight for a little more than two weeks, I'll resume work then, maybe start a PR when it's ready.

Etienne



Le 08/02/2017 à 19:48, Kenneth Knowles a écrit :
Hi Etienne,

If the timer is firing n times for n elements, that's a bug in the runner / shared runner code. It should be deduped. Which runner? Can you file a JIRA against me to investigate? I'm still in the process of fleshing out more and more RunnableOnService (aka ValidatesRunner) tests so I will surely add one (existing tests already OOMed without deduping, so it wasn't at the top
of my priority list)

If the end user doesn't have a natural key, I would just add one and remove it within your transform. Not sure how easy this will be - you might need
user intervention. Of course, you still do need to shard or you'll be
processing the whole PCollection serially.

Kenn

On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 9:45 AM, Jean-Baptiste Onofré <j...@nanthrax.net>
wrote:

Hi

AFAIR the timer per function is in the "roadmap" (remembering discussion
we had with Kenn).

I will take a deeper look next week on your branch.

Regards
JB

On Feb 8, 2017, 13:28, at 13:28, Etienne Chauchot <echauc...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi Kenn,

I have started using state and timer APIs, they seem awesome!

Please take a look at
https://github.com/echauchot/beam/tree/BEAM-135-BATCHING-PARDO

It contains a PTransform that does the batching trans-bundles and
respecting the windows (even if tests are not finished yet, see @Ignore

and TODOs)

  I have some questions:

- I use the timer to detect the end of the window like you suggested.
But the timer can only be set in @ProcessElement and @Ontimer. Javadoc says that timers are implicitly scoped to a key/window and that a timer

can be set only for a single time per scope. I noticed that if I call
timer.setForNowPlus in the @ProcessElement method, it seems that the
timer is set n times for n elements. So I just created a state with
boolean to prevent setting the timer more than once per key/window.
=> Would it be good maybe to have a end user way of indicating that the

timer will be set only once per key/window. Something analogous to
@Setup, to avoid the user having to use a state boolean?

- I understand that state and timers need to be per-key, but if the end

user does not need a key (lets say he just needs a
PCollection<String>).
Then, do we tell him to use a PCollection<KV> anyway like I wrote in
the
javadoc of BatchingParDo?

WDYT?

Thanks,

Etienne


Le 26/01/2017 à 17:28, Etienne Chauchot a écrit :
Wonderful !

Thanks Kenn !

Etienne


Le 26/01/2017 à 15:34, Kenneth Knowles a écrit :
Hi Etienne,

I was drafting a proposal about @OnWindowExpiration when this email
arrived. I thought I would try to quickly unblock you by responding
with a
TL;DR: you can achieve your goals with state & timers as they
currently
exist. You'll set a timer for
window.maxTimestamp().plus(allowedLateness)
precisely - when this timer fires, you are guaranteed that the input
watermark has exceeded this point (so all new data is droppable)
while the
output timestamp is held to this point (so you can safely output
into
the
window).

@OnWindowExpiration is (1) a convenience to save you from needing a
handle
on the allowed lateness (not a problem in your case) and (2)
actually
meaningful and potentially less expensive to implement in the
absence of
state (this is why it needs a design discussion at all, really).

Caveat: these APIs are new and not supported in every runner and
windowing
configuration.

Kenn

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 1:48 AM, Etienne Chauchot
<echauc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi,

I have started to implement this ticket. For now it is implemented
as a
PTransform that simply does ParDo.of(new DoFn) and all the
processing
related to batching is done in the DoFn.

I'm starting to deal with windows and bundles (starting to take a
look at
the State API to process trans-bundles, more questions about this
to
come).
My comments/questions are inline:


Le 17/01/2017 à 18:41, Ben Chambers a écrit :

We should start by understanding the goals. If elements are in
different
windows can they be out in the same batch? If they have different
timestamps what timestamp should the batch have?

Regarding timestamps: currently design is as so: the transform does
not
group elements in the PCollection, so the "batch" does not exist as
an
element in the PCollection. There is only a user defined function
(perBatchFn) that gets called when batchSize elements have been
processed.
This function takes an ArrayList as parameter. So elements keep
their
original timestamps


Regarding windowing: I guess that if elements are not in the same
window,
they are not expected to be in the same batch.
I'm just starting to work on these subjects, so I might lack a bit
of
information;
what I am currently thinking about is that I need a way to know in
the
DoFn that the window has expired so that I can call the perBatchFn
even if
batchSize is not reached. This is the @OnWindowExpiration callback
that
Kenneth mentioned in an email about bundles.
Lets imagine that we have a collection of elements artificially
timestamped every 10 seconds (for simplicity of the example) and a
fixed
windowing of 1 minute. Then each window contains 6 elements. If we
were to
buffer the elements by batches of 5 elements, then for each window
we
expect to get 2 batches (one of 5 elements, one of 1 element). For
that to
append, we need a @OnWindowExpiration on the DoFn where we call
perBatchFn

As a composite transform this will likely require a group by key
which may
affect performance. Maybe within a dofn is better.

Yes, the processing is done with a DoFn indeed.

Then it could be some annotation or API that informs the runner.
Should
batch sizes be fixed in the annotation (element count or size) or
should
the user have some method that lets them decide when to process a
batch
based on the contents?

For now, the user passes batchSize as an argument to
BatchParDo.via() it
is a number of elements. But batch based on content might be useful
for the
user. Give hint to the runner might be more flexible for the
runner.
Thanks.

Another thing to think about is whether this should be connected
to
the
ability to run parts of the bundle in parallel.

Yes!

Maybe each batch is an RPC
and you just want to start an async RPC for each batch. Then in
addition
to
start the final RPC in finishBundle, you also need to wait for all
the
RPCs
to complete.

Actually, currently each batch processing is whatever the user
wants
(perBatchFn user defined function). If the user decides to issue an
async
RPC in that function (call with the arrayList of input elements),
IMHO he
is responsible for waiting for the response in that method if he
needs the
response, but he can also do a send and forget, depending on his
use
case.

Besides, I have also included a perElementFn user function to allow
the
user to do some processing on the elements before adding them to
the
batch
(example use case: convert a String to a DTO object to invoke an
external
service)

Etienne

On Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 8:48 AM Etienne Chauchot<echauc...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi JB,

I meant jira vote but discussion on the ML works also :)

As I understand the need (see stackoverflow links in jira ticket)
the
aim is to avoid the user having to code the batching logic in his
own
DoFn.processElement() and DoFn.finishBundle() regardless of the
bundles.
For example, possible use case is to batch a call to an external
service
(for performance).

I was thinking about providing a PTransform that implements the
batching
in its own DoFn and that takes user defined functions for
customization.

Etienne

Le 17/01/2017 à 17:30, Jean-Baptiste Onofré a écrit :

Hi

I guess you mean discussion on the mailing list about that, right
?
AFAIR the ide⁣​a is to provide a utility class to deal with

pooling/batching. However not sure it's required as with
@StartBundle etc
in DoFn and batching depends of the end user "logic".

Regards
JB

On Jan 17, 2017, 08:26, at 08:26, Etienne
Chauchot<echauc...@gmail.com>

wrote:

Hi all,
I have started to work on this ticket
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-135

As there where no vote since March 18th, is the issue still
relevant/needed?

Regards,

Etienne




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