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Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 14:13:09 -0800 (PST)
From: "Chris Douglas (JIRA)" <jira@apache.org>
To: core-dev@hadoop.apache.org
Subject: [jira] Commented: (HADOOP-449) Generalize the
 SequenceFileInputFilter to apply to any InputFormat
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    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-449?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12566819#action_12566819 ] 

Chris Douglas commented on HADOOP-449:
--------------------------------------

bq. I think people will understand that nesting FilterInputFormat cannot be done with the current API

True. The case I had in mind wasn't so much nesting as it was simultaneous instantiation. For example, the classes in mapred.join wouldn't hesitate to accept multiple FilterInputFormats for multiple datasources, but- as you point out- the API is such that one would quickly realize that chained filters aren't possible without some effort. I was hoping that these classes could be integrated into the aforementioned framework and I'm confident they can be.

On that note, the MD5PercentFilter guards access to the MessageDigest within the instance, but multiple instances could corrupt it. It would probably be better if it were not static.

Also, since a filter may discard the vast majority of the input, is it necessary to update the reporter to avoid a timeout? A call to next may churn through data for some time, and I'm uncertain whether one can expect the base InputFormat to keep the task alive. I'd expect it to be fine for the majority of cases, but if you felt like being paranoid it's not insane.
bq. If you see a better solution to pass the Writables to the tasks, I will be very glad to adopt it. Or should we add setWritable() getWritable() to the Configuration?
I don't, sorry. :) I remember the JIRA you mention, the rejection of get/setWritable, and the reasoning probably remains sound. Other than the solutions you propose, the only other way I can think of would be to have an auxiliary InputFormat/input dir that slurps a set of keys (no splits!) into an in-memory Set and assume that the OOM exceptions are a strong hint to the user. Gross.

Still, you could probably still restrict these to Text, as long as the user is aware of SequenceFileAsTextInputFormat and related options. Automatically converting to String could produce some weird results if one isn't aware of how the filter is effected. Forcing someone to figure out how to get their WritableComparables to Text is ample warning, I think.

> Generalize the SequenceFileInputFilter to apply to any InputFormat
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: HADOOP-449
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-449
>             Project: Hadoop Core
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: mapred
>    Affects Versions: 0.17.0
>            Reporter: Owen O'Malley
>            Assignee: Enis Soztutar
>             Fix For: 0.17.0
>
>         Attachments: filterinputformat_v1.patch
>
>
> I'd like to generalize the SequenceFileInputFormat that was introduced in HADOOP-412 so that it can be applied to any InputFormat. To do this, I propose:
> interface WritableFilter {
>    boolean accept(Writable item);
> }
> class FilterInputFormat implements InputFormat {
>   ...
> }
> FilterInputFormat would look in the JobConf for:
>    mapred.input.filter.source = the underlying input format
>    mapred.input.filter.filters = a list of class names that implement WritableFilter
> The FilterInputFormat will work like the current SequenceFilter, but use an internal RecordReader rather than the SequenceFile. This will require adding a next(key) and getCurrentValue(value) to the RecordReader interface, but that will be addressed in a different issue.

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