Reynold Xin created SPARK-25841:
-----------------------------------
Summary: Redesign window function rangeBetween API
Key: SPARK-25841
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-25841
Project: Spark
Issue Type: Umbrella
Components: SQL
Affects Versions: 2.3.2, 2.4.0
Reporter: Reynold Xin
Assignee: Reynold Xin
As I was reviewing the Spark API changes for 2.4, I found that through organic,
ad-hoc evolution the current API for window functions in Scala is pretty bad.
To illustrate the problem, we have two rangeBetween functions in Window class:
class Window {
def unboundedPreceding: Long
...
def rangeBetween(start: Long, end: Long): WindowSpec
def rangeBetween(start: Column, end: Column): WindowSpec
}
The Column version of rangeBetween was added in Spark 2.3 because the previous
version (Long) could only support integral values and not time intervals. Now
in order to support specifying unboundedPreceding in the rangeBetween(Column,
Column) API, we added an unboundedPreceding that returns a Column in
functions.scala.
There are a few issues I have with the API:
1. To the end user, this can be just super confusing. Why are there two
unboundedPreceding functions, in different classes, that are named the same but
return different types?
2. Using Column as the parameter signature implies this can be an actual
Column, but in practice rangeBetween can only accept literal values.
3. We added the new APIs to support intervals, but they don't actually work,
because in the implementation we try to validate the start is less than the
end, but calendar interval types are not comparable, and as a result we throw a
type mismatch exception at runtime: scala.MatchError: CalendarIntervalType (of
class org.apache.spark.sql.types.CalendarIntervalType$)
4. In order to make interval work, users need to create an interval using
CalendarInterval, which is an internal class that has no documentation and no
stable API.
--
This message was sent by Atlassian JIRA
(v7.6.3#76005)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
