Which environment would be used to perform the expansion? I think this is an
interesting option, as long as it does not introduce a hard dependency on
docker.
The same environment that the to-be-expanded transform requires during
runtime.
Dataflow has been doing something similar in this route where it is trying to
get rid of the driver program running on the users machine. If you can get the
expansion service to launch and run an environment to perform the expansion,
you could also get it to create and submit a job as well returning data around
the running job.
Portability already runs without a driver on the user machine, apart
from expansion and staging. For anything runtime-related the job server
kicks in. It's worth to think about delegating expansion and staging to
the Job server.
On 24.05.19 23:48, Lukasz Cwik wrote:
Dataflow has been doing something similar in this route where it is
trying to get rid of the driver program running on the users machine. If
you can get the expansion service to launch and run an environment to
perform the expansion, you could also get it to create and submit a job
as well returning data around the running job.
On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 7:47 AM Thomas Weise <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 3:46 AM Maximilian Michels <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Writing a new transform involves updating the expansion
service to include their new transform.
Would it be conceivable that the expansion is performed via the
environment? That would solve the problem of updating the expansion
service, although it adds additional complexity for bringing up the
environment.
Which environment would be used to perform the expansion? I think
this is an interesting option, as long as it does not introduce a
hard dependency on docker.
On 23.05.19 11:31, Robert Bradshaw wrote:
> On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 6:17 PM Maximilian Michels
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Robert and me were discussing on the subject of
user-specified
> environments for external transforms [1]. We couldn't
decide whether
> users should have direct control over the environment
when they use an
> external transform in their pipeline.
>
> In my mind, it is quite natural that the Expansion
Service is a
> long-running service that gets started with a list of
available
> environments.
>
>
> +1.
>
> IMHO, the expansion service should be expected to provide valid
> environments for the transforms it vendors. Removing this
expectation
> seems wrong. Making it cheap to specify non-default
dependencies without
> building (publishing, etc.) a docker image is probably key to
making
> this work well (and also allowing more powerful environment
introspection).
>
> Such a list can be outdated and users may write transforms
> for a new environment they want to use in their pipeline.
>
>
> This is the part that I'm having trouble following. Writing a
new
> transform involves updating the expansion service to include
their new
> transform. The author of a transform (in other words, the one
who
> defines its expansion and implementation) is in the position
to name its
> dependencies, etc. and the user of the transform (the one
invoking it)
> is not in a generally good position to know what environments
would be
> valid.
>
> The easiest
> way would be to allow to pass the environment with the
transform.
>
>
> What this allows is using existing transforms in new
environments. There
> are possibly some usecases for this, e.g. expansion of a
given transform
> may be compatible with ether version X or version Y of a
library, left
> up to the discretion of the caller, but I think that this is
really just
> a deficiency in our environment specifications (e.g. it one
should be
> able to express this flexibility in the returned environment).
>
> Note
> that we already give users control over the "main"
environment via the
> PortablePipelineOptions, so this wouldn't be an entirely
new concept.
>
>
> Yes, the author of a pipeline/transform chooses the
environment in which
> those transforms execute.
>
> The contrary position is that the Expansion Service
should have full
> control over which environment is chosen. Going back to
the discussion
> about artifact staging [2], this could enable to perform more
> optimizations, such as merging environments or detecting
conflicts.
> However, this only works if this information has been
provided upfront
> to the Expansion Service. It wouldn't be impossible to
provide these
> hints alongside with the environment like suggested in
the previous
> paragraph.
>
> Any opinions? Should we allow users to optionally specify an
> environment
> for external transforms?
>
> Thanks,
> Max
>
> [1] https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/8639
> [2]
>
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/6fcee7047f53cf1c0636fb65367ef70842016d57effe2e5795c4137d@%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E
>
