Implement a MergeSort like feature in spark with scala - scala

Question

Spark Version 1.2.1
Scala Version 2.10.4
I have 2 SchemaRDD which are associated by a numeric field:
RDD 1: (Big table - about a million records)
[A,3]
[B,4]
[C,5]
[D,7]
[E,8]
RDD 2: (Small table < 100 records so using it as a Broadcast Variable)
[SUM, 2]
[WIN, 6]
[MOM, 7]
[DOM, 9]
[POM, 10]
Result
[C,5, WIN]
[D,7, MOM]
[E,8, DOM]
[E,8, POM]
I want the max(field) from RDD1 which is <= the field from RDD2.
I am trying to approach this using Merge by:
Sorting RDD by a key (sort within a group will have not more than 100 records in that group. In the above example is within a group)
Performing the merge operation similar to mergesort. Here I need to keep a track of the previous value as well to find the max; still I traverse the list only once.
Since there are too may variables here I am getting "Task not serializable" exception. Is this implementation approach Correct? I am trying to avoid the Cartesian Product here. Is there a better way to do it?
Adding the code -
rdd1.groupBy(itm => (itm(2), itm(3))).mapValues( itmorg => {
val miorec = itmorg.toList.sortBy(_(1).toString)
for( r <- 0 to miorec.length) {
for ( q <- 0 to rdd2.value.length) {
if ( (miorec(r)(1).toString > rdd2.value(q).toString && miorec(r-1)(1).toString <= rdd2.value(q).toString && r > 0) || r == miorec.length)
org.apache.spark.sql.Row(miorec(r-1)(0),miorec(r-1)(1),miorec(r-1)(2),miorec(r-1)(3),rdd2.value(q))
}
}
}).collect.foreach(println)

Answer 1

I would not do a global sort. It is an expensive operation for what you need. Finding the maximum is certainly cheaper than getting a global ordering of all values. Instead, do this:
For each partition, build a structure that keeps the max on RDD1 for each row on RDD2. This can be trivially done using mapPartitions and normal scala data structures. You can even use your one-pass merge code here. You should get something like a HashMap(WIN -> (C, 5), MOM -> (D, 7), ...)
Once this is done locally on each executor, merging these resulting data structures should be simple using reduce.
The goal here is to do little to no shuffling an keeping the most complex operation local, since the result size you want is very small (it would be easier in code to just create all valid key/values with RDD1 and RDD2 then aggregateByKey, but less efficient).
As for your exception, you woudl need to show the code, "Task not serializable" usually means you are passing around closures which are not, well, serializable ;-)