Spark - how to handle with lazy evaluation in case of iterative (or recursive) function calls - scala

Question

I have a recursive function that needs to compare the results of the current call to the previous call to figure out whether it has reached a convergence. My function does not contain any action - it only contains map, flatMap, and reduceByKey. Since Spark does not evaluate transformations (until an action is called), my next iteration does not get the proper values to compare for convergence.
Here is a skeleton of the function -
def func1(sc: SparkContext, nodes:RDD[List[Long]], didConverge: Boolean, changeCount: Int) RDD[(Long] = {
if (didConverge)
nodes
else {
val currChangeCount = sc.accumulator(0, "xyz")
val newNodes = performSomeOps(nodes, currChangeCount) // does a few map/flatMap/reduceByKey operations
if (currChangeCount.value == changeCount) {
func1(sc, newNodes, true, currChangeCount.value)
} else {
func1(sc, newNode, false, currChangeCount.value)
}
}
}
performSomeOps only contains map, flatMap, and reduceByKey transformations. Since it does not have any action, the code in performSomeOps does not execute. So my currChangeCount does not get the actual count. What that implies, the condition to check for the convergence (currChangeCount.value == changeCount) is going to be invalid. One way to overcome is to force an action within each iteration by calling a count but that is an unnecessary overhead.
I am wondering what I can do to force an action w/o much overhead or is there another way to address this problem?

Answer 1

I believe there is a very important thing you're missing here:
For accumulator updates performed inside actions only, Spark guarantees that each task’s update to the accumulator will only be applied once, i.e. restarted tasks will not update the value. In transformations, users should be aware of that each task’s update may be applied more than once if tasks or job stages are re-executed.
Because of that accumulators cannot be reliably used for managing control flow and are better suited for job monitoring.
Moreover executing an action is not an unnecessary overhead. If you want to know what is the result of the computation you have to perform it. Unless of course the result is trivial. The cheapest action possible is:
rdd.foreach { case _ => }
but it won't address the problem you have here.
In general iterative computations in Spark can be structured as follows:
def func1(chcekpoinInterval: Int)(sc: SparkContext, nodes:RDD[List[Long]],
didConverge: Boolean, changeCount: Int, iteration: Int) RDD[(Long] = {
if (didConverge) nodes
else {
// Compute and cache new nodes
val newNodes = performSomeOps(nodes, currChangeCount).cache
// Periodically checkpoint to avoid stack overflow
if (iteration % checkpointInterval == 0) newNodes.checkpoint
/* Call a function which computes values
that determines control flow. This execute an action on newNodes.
*/
val changeCount = computeChangeCount(newNodes)
// Unpersist old nodes
nodes.unpersist
func1(checkpointInterval)(
sc, newNodes, currChangeCount.value == changeCount,
currChangeCount.value, iteration + 1
)
}
}

Answer 2

I see that these map/flatMap/reduceByKey transformations are updating an accumulator. Therefore the only way to perform all updates is to execute all these functions and count is the easiest way to achieve that and gives the lowest overhead compared to other ways (cache + count, first or collect).

Answer 3

Previous answers put me on the right track to solve a similar convergence detection problem.
foreach is presented in the docs as:
foreach(func) : Run a function func on each element of the dataset. This is usually done for side effects such as updating an Accumulator or interacting with external storage systems.
It seems like instead of using rdd.foreach() as a cheap action to trigger accumulator increments placed in various transformations, it should be used to do the incrementing itself.
I'm unable to produce a scala example, but here's a basic java version, if it can still help:
// Convergence is reached when two iterations
// return the same number of results
long previousCount = -1;
long currentCount = 0;
while (previousCount != currentCount){
rdd = doSomethingThatUpdatesRdd(rdd);
// Count entries in new rdd with foreach + accumulator
rdd.foreach(tuple -> accumulator.add(1));
// Update helper values
previousCount = currentCount;
currentCount = accumulator.sum();
accumulator.reset();
}
// Convergence is reached