scala queue sort method - scala

I am comparing a number of different methods for organizing the nodes at the "frontier" in dijkstra's single source shortest path algorithm. One of the implementations that I am playing around with is using q: scala.collection.mutable.Queue.
Essentially, each time I add a node to q, I sort q. This method, as expected, takes significantly longer than using scala.collection.mutable.PriorityQueue and a MinHeap that I implemented. My question is, what kind of sort is Queue using when I call q.sorted? I am specifically interested in the time complexity of the sorted implementation.
I have tried looking at the API (http://www.scala-lang.org/api/2.10.2/index.html#scala.collection.mutable.Queue) and code (https://github.com/scala/scala/blob/v2.10.2/src/library/scala/collection/mutable/Queue.scala#L1) but haven't been able to track this down.
Thank you in advance for your help.

Queue inherits sorted method from SeqLike. And you can see, that it creates new array of same elements, sorts array via java.util.Arrays.sort and then creates new structure of original type.

Related

Apache Spark - Implementing a distributed QuadTree

I am really, really, new to Apache Spark.
I am working on implementing Approximate LOCI (or ALOCI), an anomaly detection algorithm, on a distributed way over Spark. This algorithm is based on storing points in a QuadTree that is used to find a point's number of neighbors.
I know exactly how QuadTrees work. In fact, I have implemented such a structure in Java recently. But I am completely lost as far as it concerns the way that such a structure can work in a distributed way over Spark.
Something similar to what I need can be found in Geospark.
https://github.com/DataSystemsLab/GeoSpark/tree/b2b6f1d7f0015d5c9d663a7b28d5e1bb1043c413/core/src/main/java/org/datasyslab/geospark/spatialPartitioning/quadtree
GeoSpark uses in many cases a PointRDD class, that extends a SpatialRDD class which I can see that uses the QuadTree that can be found in the link above to partition the Spatial objects. That is what I understood, at least, in theory.
In practice, I still cannot figure this out. Let's say for example that I have millions of records in a csv and I want to read and load them in a QuadTree.
I could read a csv to an RDD, but then what? How does this RDD logically connects to the QuadTree I am trying to build?
Of course, I don't expect a working solution here. I just need the logic here to fill the gap in my mind. How do I implement a distributed QuadTree and how do I use it?
Ok, sadly there are no answers to this, but here I am two weeks later with a working solution. Not 100% sure if it is the right approach here, though.
I created a class named Element and turned each line of my csv to an RDD[Element]. I then created a serializable class named QuadNode which has a List[Elements] and an Array[String] of size 4. On adding elements to a node, these elements are added in the node's List. If the list get more than X elements (20 in my case), the node breaks into 4 children and the elements are sent to the children. Finally, I created a class QuadTree which has an RDD[QuadNodes] among its rest properties. Every time a node breaks to children then these children-nodes are added in the tree's RDD.
In a non-functional language, each node would have 4 pointers, one for each child. Since, we are in a distributed environment this approach could not work. So, I gave each node a unique Id. Root node has an id = "0". Root's nodes have ids "00", "01", "02" and "03". Node-"00" children have ids "000","001","002","003". In this way if we want to find all the descendants of a node, we filter our tree's RDD[QuadNode] by checking if nodes' ids startWith out node id. Reversing this logic helps us to find a node's parent node.
This is how I implemented my QuadTree, at least for now. If someone knows a better way of implementing this I would love to hear his/her opinion.

Drools 6 Fusion Notification

We are working in a very complex solution using drools 6 (Fusion) and I would like your opinion about best way to read Objects created during the correlation results over time.
My first basic approach was to read Working Memory every certain time, looking for new objects and reporting them to external Service (REST).
AgendaEventListener does not seems to be the "best" approach beacuse I dont care about most of the objects being inserted in working memory, so maybe, best approach would be to inject particular "object" in some sort of service inside DRL. Is this a good approach?
You have quite a lot of options. In decreasing order of my preference:
AgendaEventListener is probably the solution requiring the smallest amount of LOC. It might be useful for other tasks as well; all you have on the negative side is one additional method call and a class test per inserted fact. Peanuts.
You can wrap the insert macro in a DRL function and collect inserted fact of class X in a global List. The problem you have here is that you'll have to pass the KieContext as a second parameter to the function call.
If the creation of a class X object is inevitably linked with its insertion into WM, you could add the registry of new objects into a static List inside class X, to be done in a factory method (or the constructor).
I'm putting your "basic approach" last because it requires much more cycles than the listener (#1) and tons of overhead for maintaining the set of X objects that have already been put to REST.

Why no immutable double linked list in Scala collections?

Looking at this question, where the questioner is interested in the first and last instances of some element in a List, it seems a more efficient solution would be to use a DoubleLinkedList that could search backwards from the end of the list. However there is only one implementation in the collections API and it's mutable.
Why is there no immutable version?
Because you would have to copy the whole list each time you want to make a change. With a normal linked list, you can at least prepend to the list without having to copy everything. And if you do want to copy everything on every change, you don't need a linked list for that. You can just use an immutable array.
There are many impediments to such a structure, but one is very pressing: a doubly linked list cannot be persistent.
The logic behind this is pretty simple: from any node on the list, you can reach any other node. So, if I added an element X to this list DL, and tried to use a part of DL, I'd face this contradiction: from the node pointing to X one can reach every element in part(DL), but, by the properties of the doubly linked list, that means from any element of part(DL) I can reach the node pointing to X. Since part(DL) is supposed to be immutable and part of DL, and since DL did not include the node pointing to X, that just cannot be.
Non-persistent immutable data structures might have some uses, but they are generally bad for most operations, since they need to be recreated whenever a derivative is produced.
Now, there's the minor matter of creating mutually referencing strict objects, but this is surmountable. One can use by-name parameters and lazy vals, or one can do like Scala's List: actually create a mutable collection, and then "freeze" it in immutable state (see ListBuffer and it's toList method).
Because it is logically impossible to create a mutually (circular) referential data-structure with strict immutability.
You cannot create two nodes that point to each other due to simple existential ordering priority, in that at least one of the nodes will not exist when the other is created.
It is possible to get this circularity with tricks involving laziness (which is implemented with mutation), but the real question then becomes why you would want this thing in the first place?
As others have noted, there is no persistent implementation of a double-linked list. You will need some kind of tree to get close to the characteristics you want.
In particular, you may want to look at finger trees, which provide O(1) access to the front and back, amortized O(1) insertion to the front and back, and O(log n) insertion elsewhere. (That's in contrast to most other commonly-used trees which have O(log n) access and insertion everywhere.)
See also:
video explanation of finger trees (by the implementor of finger trees in clojure.contrib)
finger tree implementation in Scala (I haven't used it personally, but it's the top google hit)
As a supplemental to the answer of #KimStebel I like to add:
If you are searching for a data structure suitable for the question that motivated you to ask this question, then you might have a look at Extreme Cleverness: Functional Data Structures in Scala by #DanielSpiewak.

What is the prefered way in using the parallel collections in Scala?

At first I assumed that every collection class would receive an additional par method which would convert the collection to a fitting parallel data structure (like map returns the best collection for the element type in Scala 2.8).
Now it seems that some collection classes support a par method (e. g. Array) but others have toParSeq, toParIterable methods (e. g. List). This is a bit weird, since Array isn't used or recommended that often.
What is the reason for that? Wouldn't it be better to just have a par available on all collection classes doing the "right thing"?
If I have data which might be processed in parallel, what types should I use? The traits in scala.collection or the type of the implementation directly?
Or should I prefer Arrays now, because they seem to be cheaper to parallelize?
Lists aren't that well suited for parallel processing. The reason is that to get to the end of the list, you have to walk through every single element. Thus, you may as well just treat the list as an iterator, and thus may as well just use something more generic like toParIterable.
Any collection that has a fast index is a good candidate for parallel processing. This includes anything implementing LinearSeqOptimized, plus trees and hash tables. Array has as fast of an index as you can get, so it's a fairly natural choice. You can also use things like ArrayBuffer (which has a par method returning a ParArray).

is breadth first search or breadth first traversal possible without using a queue?

As I remember and checked, the usual way for traversing a tree or crawling the web breadth first (BFS) is by using a queue. Is there actually a way to implement it not using a queue?
I know this question is old now, but I just wanted to answer. You can do this with arrays, linked lists (or any other linear container) and without recursion. Keep two containers, old and new, and swap old with new when you traverse all of the items in old. Very similar to the implementation with queue.
In Python it would look like:
def breadth_first(root):
if not root:
return
old = []
new = []
old.append(root)
while old:
for n in old:
process(n) # Do something
if n.left:
new.append(n.left)
if n.right:
new.append(n.right)
old = new
new = []
Runtime complexity would be the same as the queue implementation, O(n).
You really should be using a queue, as its easier to implement. Also, a queue allows for multiple machines to work together (one queues site while another pops sites off of the queue to traverse).
The only other way I see to do this is by using recursion (much more difficult, and uses only marginally either more or less memory).
With recursion. But the queue is in the stack...
if you care about ordering, use queue. queue preserves the insertion ordering. or you can use list's implementation, say, two array lists, to alternate. But fundamentally, list preserves ordering too.
if you don't care about ordering, you can use any set implementations. sets doesn't preserve this ordering.
For example, in BFS implementation, if you don't care the ordering of nodes, you can use two sets, old and new to alternate, rather than a queue.