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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-15769?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15586577#comment-15586577
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Reynold Xin commented on SPARK-15769:
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[~koert] what you want is just type conversion isn't it? In that case don't we
just need an input data type specified, rather than an encoder?
Encoder specifies the mapping from the user-visible type to the underlying
physical types -- it doesn't really make sense to have an "input encoder" to
me. Maybe I'm missing something?
> Add Encoder for input type to Aggregator
> ----------------------------------------
>
> Key: SPARK-15769
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-15769
> Project: Spark
> Issue Type: Sub-task
> Components: SQL
> Reporter: koert kuipers
> Priority: Minor
>
> Currently org.apache.spark.sql.expressions.Aggregator has Encoders for its
> buffer and output type, but not for its input type. The thought is that the
> input type is known from the Dataset it operates on and hence can be inserted
> later.
> However i think there are compelling reasons to have Aggregator carry an
> Encoder for its input type:
> * Generally transformations on Dataset only require the Encoder for the
> result type since the input type is exactly known and it's Encoder is already
> available within the Dataset. However this is not the case for an Aggregator:
> an Aggregator is defined independently of a Dataset, and i think it should be
> generally desirable that an Aggregator work on any type that can safely be
> cast to the Aggregator's input type (for example an Aggregator that has Long
> as input should work on a Dataset of Ints).
> * Aggregators should also work on DataFrames, because its a much nicer API to
> use than UserDefinedAggregateFunction. And when operating on DataFrames you
> should not have to use Row objects, which means your input type is not equal
> to the type of the Dataset you operate on (so the Encoder of the Dataset that
> is operated on should not be used as input Encoder for the Aggregator).
> * Adding an input Encoder is not a big burden, since it can typically be
> created implicitly
> * It removes TypedColumn.withInputType and its usage in Dataset,
> KeyValueGroupedDataset and RelationalGroupedDataset, which always felt
> somewhat ad-hoc to me
> * Once an Aggregator has an Encoder for it's input type it is a small change
> to make the Aggregator also work on a subset of columns in a DataFrame, which
> facilitates Aggregator re-use since you don't have to write a custom
> Aggregator to extract the columns from a specific DataFrame. This also
> enables a usage that is more typical within a DataFrame context, very similar
> to how a UserDefinedAggregateFunction is used.
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