Is this a suitable way to implement a lazy `take` on RDD? - scala

It's quite unfortunate that take on RDD is a strict operation instead of lazy but I won't get into why I think that's a regrettable design here and now.
My question is whether this is a suitable implementation of a lazy take for RDD. It seems to work, but I might be missing some non-obvious problem with it.
def takeRDD[T: scala.reflect.ClassTag](rdd: RDD[T], num: Long): RDD[T] =
new RDD[T](rdd.context, List(new OneToOneDependency(rdd))) {
// An unfortunate consequence of the way the RDD AST is designed
var doneSoFar = 0L
def isDone = doneSoFar >= num
override def getPartitions: Array[Partition] = rdd.partitions
// Should I do this? Doesn't look like I need to
// override val partitioner = self.partitioner
override def compute(split: Partition, ctx: TaskContext): Iterator[T] = new Iterator[T] {
val inner = rdd.compute(split, ctx)
override def hasNext: Boolean = !isDone && inner.hasNext
override def next: T = {
doneSoFar += 1
inner.next
}
}
}

Answer to your question
No, this doesn't work. There's no way to have a variable which can be seen and updated concurrently across a Spark cluster, and that's exactly what you're trying to use doneSoFar as. If you try this, then when you run compute (in parallel across many nodes), you
a) serialize the takeRDD in the task, because you reference the class variable doneSoFar. This means that you write the class to bytes and make a new instance in each JVM (executor)
b) update doneSoFar in compute, which updates the local instance on each executor JVM. You'll take a number of elements from each partition equal to num.
It's possible this will work in Spark local mode due to some of the JVM properties there, but it CERTAINLY will not work when running Spark in cluster mode.
Why take is an action, not transformation
RDDs are distributed, and so subsetting to an exact number of elements is an inefficient operation -- it can't be done totally in parallel, since each shard needs information about the other shards (like whether it should be computed at all). Take is great for bringing distributed data back into local memory.
rdd.sample is a similar operation that stays in the distributed world, and can be run in parallel easily.

Related

How to clean up substreams in continuous Akka streams

Given I have a very long running stream of events flowing through something as show below. When a long time has passed there will be lots of sub streams created that is no longer needed.
Is there a way to clean up a specific substream at a given time, for
example the substream created by id 3 should be cleaned and the state
in the scan method lost at 13Pm (expires property of Wid)?
case class Wid(id: Int, v: String, expires: LocalDateTime)
test("Substream with scan") {
val (pub, sub) = TestSource.probe[Wid]
.groupBy(Int.MaxValue, _.id)
.scan("")((a: String, b: Wid) => a + b.v)
.mergeSubstreams
.toMat(TestSink.probe[String])(Keep.both)
.run()
}
TL;DR You can close a substream after some time. However, using input to dynamically set the time with built-in stages is another matter.
Closing a substream
To close a flow, you usually complete it (from upstream), but you can also cancel it (from downstream). For instance, the take(n: Int) flow will cancel once n elements have gone through.
Now, in the groupBy case, you cannot complete a substream, since upstream is shared by all substreams, but you can cancel it. How depends on what condition you want to put on its end.
However, be aware that groupBy removes inputs for subflows that have already been closed: If a new element with id 3 comes from upstream to the groupBy after the 3-substream has been closed, it will simply be ignored and the next element will be pulled in. The reason for this is probably that some elements might be lost in the process between closing and re-opening of the substream. Also, if your stream is supposed to run for a very long time, this will affect performances because each element will be checked against the list of closed substreams before being forwarded to the relevant (live) substream. You might want to implement your own stateful filter (say, with a bloom filter) if you're not satisfied with the performances of this.
To close a substream, I usually use either take (if you want only a given number of elements, but that's probably not the case on an infinite stream), or some kind of timeout: either completionTimeout if you want a fixed time from materialization to closure or idleTimeout if you want to close when no element have been coming through for some time. Note that these flows do not cancel the stream but fail it, so you have to catch the exception with a recover or recoverWith stage to change the failure into a cancel (recoverWith allows you to cancel without sending any last element, by recovering with Source.empty).
Dynamically set the timeout
Now what you want is to set dynamically the closing time according to the first passing element. This is more complicated because materialization of streams is independant of the elements that pass through them. Indeed, in the usual (without groupBy) case, streams are materialized before any element go through them, so it makes no sense to use elements to materialize them.
I had similar issues in that question, and ended up using a modified version of groupBy with signature
paramGroupBy[K, OO, MM](maxSubstreams: Int, f: Out => K, paramSubflow: K => Flow[Out, OO, MM])
that allows to define every substream using the key that defined it. This can be modified to have the first element (instead of the key), as parameter.
Another (probably simpler, in your case) way would be to write your own stage that does exactly what you want: get end-time from first element and cancel the stream at that time. Here is an example implementation for this (I used a scheduler instead of setting a state):
object CancelAfterTimer
class CancelAfter[T](getTimeout: T => FiniteDuration) extends GraphStage[FlowShape[T, T]] {
val in = Inlet[T]("CancelAfter.in")
val out = Outlet[T]("CancelAfter.in")
override val shape: FlowShape[T, T] = FlowShape(in, out)
override def createLogic(inheritedAttributes: Attributes): GraphStageLogic = new TimerGraphStageLogic(shape) with InHandler with OutHandler {
override def onPush(): Unit = {
val elem = grab(in)
if (!isTimerActive(CancelAfterTimer))
scheduleOnce(CancelAfterTimer, getTimeout(elem))
push(out, elem)
}
override def onTimer(timerKey: Any): Unit =
completeStage() //this will cancel the upstream and close the downstrean
override def onPull(): Unit = pull(in)
setHandlers(in, out, this)
}
}

Scala hashmap not getting appended

I don't understand what is wrong with the code below. This works fine and hashmap typeMap gets updated if my input data frame is not partitioned. But if the code below is executed in a partitioned environment, typeMap is always empty and not updated. What is wrong with this code? Thanks for all your help.
var typeMap = new mutable.HashMap[String, (String, Array[String])]
case class Combiner(,,,,,,, mapTypes: mutable.HashMap[String, (String, Array[String])]) {
def execute() {
<...>
val combinersResult = dfInput.rdd.aggregate(combiners.toArray) (incrementCount, mergeCount)
}
def updateTypes(arr: Array[String], tempMapTypes:mutable.HashMap[String, (String, Array[String])]): Unit = {
<...>
typeMap ++= tempMapTypes
}
def incrementCount(combiners: Array[Combiner], row: Row): Array[Combiner] = {
for (i <- 0 until row.length) {
val array = getMyType(row(i), tempMapTypes)
combiners(i). updateTypes(array, tempMapTypes)
}
combiners
}
It is a really bad idea to use mutable values in distributed computing. With Spark in particular, RDD operations are shipped from the driver to the executors and are executed in parallel on all the different machines in the cluster. Updates made to your mutable.HashMap are never sent back to the driver, so you are stuck with the empty map that got constructed on the driver in the first place.
So you need to completely rethink your data structures by preferring immutability and to remember that operations firing on the executors are independent and parallel.

How to get truly atomic update for TrieMap.getOrElseUpdate

As I understand, TrieMap.getOrElseUpdate is still not truly atomic, and this fixes only returned result (it could return different instances for different callers before this fix), so the updater function still might be called several times, as documentation (for 2.11.7) says:
Note: This method will invoke op at most once. However, op may be invoked without the result being added to the map if a concurrent process is also trying to add a value corresponding to the same key k.
*I've checked that manually for 2.11.7, still "at least once"
How to guarantee one-time call (if I use TrieMap for factories)?
I think this solution should work for my requirements:
trait LazyComp { val get: Int }
val map = new TrieMap[String, LazyComp]()
val count = new AtomicInteger() //just for test, you don't need it
def getSingleton(key: String) = {
val v = new LazyComp {
lazy val get = {
//compute something
count.incrementAndGet() //just for test, you don't need it
}
}
map.putIfAbsent(key, v).getOrElse(v).get
}
I believe, lazy val actually uses synchronized inside. And also the code inside get should be safe from exceptions
However, performance could be improved in future: SIP-20
Test:
scala> (0 to 10000000).par.map(_ => getSingleton("zzz")).last
res8: Int = 1
P.S. Java has computeIfAbscent method on ConcurrentHashMap which I could use as well.

Scala: Thread safe mutable lazy Iterator with append

For an immutable flavour, Iterator does the job.
val x = Iterator.fill(100000)(someFn)
Now I want to implement a mutable version of Iterator, with three guarantees:
thread-safe on all transformations(fold, foldLeft, ..) and append
lazy evaluated
traversable only once! Once used, an object from this Iterator should be destroyed.
Is there an existing implementation to give me these guarantees? Any library or framework example would be great.
Update
To illustrate the desired behaviour.
class SomeThing {}
class Test(val list: Iterator[SomeThing]) {
def add(thing: SomeThing): Test = {
new Test(list ++ Iterator(thing))
}
}
(new Test()).add(new SomeThing).add(new SomeThing);
In this example, SomeThing is an expensive construct, it needs to be lazy.
Re-iterating over list is never required, Iterator is a good fit.
This is supposed to asynchronously and lazily sequence 10 million SomeThing instances without depleting the executor(a cached thread pool executor) or running out of memory.
You don't need a mutable Iterator for this, just daisy-chain the immutable form:
class SomeThing {}
case class Test(val list: Iterator[SomeThing]) {
def add(thing: => SomeThing) = Test(list ++ Iterator(thing))
}
(new Test()).add(new SomeThing).add(new SomeThing)
Although you don't really need the extra boilerplate of Test here:
Iterator(new SomeThing) ++ Iterator(new SomeThing)
Note that Iterator.++ takes a by-name param, so the ++ operation is already lazy.
You might also want to try this, to avoid building intermediate Iterators:
Iterator.continually(new SomeThing) take 2
UPDATE
If you don't know the size in advance, then I'll often use a tactic like this:
def mkSomething = if(cond) Some(new Something) else None
Iterator.continually(mkSomething) takeWhile (_.isDefined) map { _.get }
The trick is to have your generator function wrap its output in an Option, which then gives you a way to flag that the iteration is finished by returning None
Of course... If you're really pushing out the boat, you can even use the dreaded null:
def mkSomething = if(cond) { new Something } else null
Iterator.continually(mkSomething) takeWhile (_ != null)
Seems like you need to hide the fact that the iterator is mutable but at the same time allow it to grow mutably. What I'm going to propose is the same sort of trick I've used to speed up ::: in the past:
abstract class AppendableIterator[A] extends Iterator[A]{
protected var inner: Iterator[A]
def hasNext = inner.hasNext
def next() = inner next ()
def append(that: Iterator[A]) = synchronized{
inner = new JoinedIterator(inner, that)
}
}
//You might need to add some more things, this is a skeleton
class JoinedIterator[A](first: Iterator[A], second: Iterator[A]) extends Iterator[A]{
def hasNext = first.hasNext || second.hasNext
def next() = if(first.hasNext) first next () else if(second.hasNext) second next () else Iterator.next()
}
So what you're really doing is leaving the Iterator at whatever place in its iteration you might have it while still preserving the thread safety of the append by "joining" another Iterator in non-destructively. You avoid the need to recompute the two together because you never actually force them through a CanBuildFrom.
This is also a generalization of just adding one item. You can always wrap some A in an Iterator[A] of one element if you so choose.
Have you looked at the mutable.ParIterable in the collection.parallel package?
To access an iterator over elements you can do something like
val x = ParIterable.fill(100000)(someFn).iterator
From the docs:
Parallel operations are implemented with divide and conquer style algorithms that parallelize well. The basic idea is to split the collection into smaller parts until they are small enough to be operated on sequentially.
...
The higher-order functions passed to certain operations may contain side-effects. Since implementations of bulk operations may not be sequential, this means that side-effects may not be predictable and may produce data-races, deadlocks or invalidation of state if care is not taken. It is up to the programmer to either avoid using side-effects or to use some form of synchronization when accessing mutable data.

Memory consumption of a parallel Scala Stream

I have written a Scala (2.9.1-1) application that needs to process several million rows from a database query. I am converting the ResultSet to a Stream using the technique shown in the answer to one of my previous questions:
class Record(...)
val resultSet = statement.executeQuery(...)
new Iterator[Record] {
def hasNext = resultSet.next()
def next = new Record(resultSet.getString(1), resultSet.getInt(2), ...)
}.toStream.foreach { record => ... }
and this has worked very well.
Since the body of the foreach closure is very CPU intensive, and as a testament to the practicality of functional programming, if I add a .par before the foreach, the closures get run in parallel with no other effort, except to make sure that the body of the closure is thread safe (it is written in a functional style with no mutable data except printing to a thread-safe log).
However, I am worried about memory consumption. Is the .par causing the entire result set to load in RAM, or does the parallel operation load only as many rows as it has active threads? I've allocated 4G to the JVM (64-bit with -Xmx4g) but in the future I will be running it on even more rows and worry that I'll eventually get an out-of-memory.
Is there a better pattern for doing this kind of parallel processing in a functional manner? I've been showing this application to my co-workers as an example of the value of functional programming and multi-core machines.
If you look at the scaladoc of Stream, you will notice that the definition class of par is the Parallelizable trait... and, if you look at the source code of this trait, you will notice that it takes each element from the original collection and put them into a combiner, thus, you will load each row into a ParSeq:
def par: ParRepr = {
val cb = parCombiner
for (x <- seq) cb += x
cb.result
}
/** The default `par` implementation uses the combiner provided by this method
* to create a new parallel collection.
*
* #return a combiner for the parallel collection of type `ParRepr`
*/
protected[this] def parCombiner: Combiner[A, ParRepr]
A possible solution is to explicitly parallelize your computation, thanks to actors for example. You can take a look at this example from the akka documentation for example, that might be helpful in your context.
The new akka stream library is the fix you're looking for:
import akka.actor.ActorSystem
import akka.stream.ActorMaterializer
import akka.stream.scaladsl.{Source, Sink}
def iterFromQuery() : Iterator[Record] = {
val resultSet = statement.executeQuery(...)
new Iterator[Record] {
def hasNext = resultSet.next()
def next = new Record(...)
}
}
def cpuIntensiveFunction(record : Record) = {
...
}
implicit val actorSystem = ActorSystem()
implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()
implicit val execContext = actorSystem.dispatcher
val poolSize = 10 //number of Records in memory at once
val stream =
Source(iterFromQuery).runWith(Sink.foreachParallel(poolSize)(cpuIntensiveFunction))
stream onComplete {_ => actorSystem.shutdown()}