DataFusion weekly project plan (Andrew Lamb) - Aug 19, 2024 + Sep 2, 2024

[alamb]

Follow on to #11986

My (personal) North ⭐ : 1000 projects are built using DataFusion 📈
( Getting closer all the time )

It would be great for other contributors to DataFusion to to make them visible somehow as well 🙏 (feel free to copy / modify the format of this ticket)

External news

• @XiangpengHao published a video and slides about adding StringView to DataFusion

Major Discussions (Please Take a Look)

• Logical Types: [Proposal] Decouple logical from physical types #11513 from @notfilippo
• dfdb: Proposal: Create dfdb, a new CLI different than datafusion-cli with pre-built integrations #11979

Upcoming Meetups

• New York, NY, USA DataFusion Meetup: Tuesday Sep 17th 2024, 5:30PM - 8:30PM Manhattan #11213
• DataFusion Belgrade Meetup 2024/09/27 #11431

Highlights from last week

• @jcsherin began the migration of BuiltInWindowFunctions to all UDFs: Convert built-in row_number to user-defined window function #12030
• @Rachelint has been hacking away with @jayzhan211 to improve performance such as Sketch for aggregation intermediate results blocked management #11943
• @korowa made the default CSV reader easier to datafusion.catalog.has_headers default value set to true #11919
• @davanbenz, @Lordworms, @dmitrybugakov kept up the momentum to add StringView support to all functions [Epic] Native StringView support for string functions #11790
• @Kev1n8 and @XiangpengHao started making substr faster using properties of StringView Improve StringView support for SUBSTR #12044
• I am preparing for the next arrow-rs upgrade: Update to arrow/parquet 53.0.0, tonic, prost, object_store, pyo3 #12032

My (personal) plans for this week

• Prepare for the arrow-rs release
• Work thorough review backlog (focused on StringView, and other features): [Epic] Complete Initial StringView in DataFusion #11752
• board report September 2024 ASF Board Report #10156
• Work down the review backlogs

Projects I plan to help actively help review / push forward

• High Cardinality Grouping: [Epic] High cardinality aggregation performance wishlist #11679
• StringView integration [Epic] Complete Initial StringView in DataFusion #11752

Algorithm for (my) prioritizing PR reviews

Note there are many committers who can and do review and merge PRs, so this is not the priorities of the project as a whole, just the approximate algorithm I use to prioritize my own time.

Priority:

1. Bug fixes (where something is just incorrect), especially regressions (where it used to work and now does not)
2. Improvements directly related to features needed for InfluxDB (my employer)
3. Documentation and test improvements (I view these as very strategically important)
4. PRs for other features I think are strategically important (See below)
5. Other new features / additions to functionality (note this is the lowest priority on purpose)

The top strategically important projects in my head are:

• Improved performance (with benchmarks -- this is high in my mind now)
• Anything that improves DataFusion's quality such as bug fixes, and improved / expanded tests, etc
• Anything that makes it easier to use DataFusion as a user (docs, examples, better APIs, etc), including Getting started guide for new users (who want to use DataFusion in their project)

Thus, if you are interested in contributing to DataFusion and are interested in a fast turn around time I would recommend looking into bug fixes / test improvements / documentation or the projects named above.

If you propose adding new functionality, especially if the PR is large/complex and not connected to a wider need, the review cycle will likely be longer. You can make it a shorter cycle by looking at the comments on other recent PRs and following the same model (e.g. ensure there are tests in sqllogictest for example, the CI passes, includes documentation, etc)

Background

The idea of this ticket is make my plans for DataFusion visible, largely for my own personal organizational needs, but also to:

1. Communicate / coordinate in the community
2. Help provide an interesting summary of what is happening in DataFusion this week (both for my future self and others)

[alamb]

In need of review

DataFusion

• Library Guide: Building LogicalPlans #7306
• Sketch for aggregation intermediate results blocked management #11943
• Improve StringView support for SUBSTR #12044

[emgeee]

Wanted to flag that the next SF Datafusion meetup is currently scheduled for September 25h -- https://lu.ma/05lyf19h

[alamb]

Next week: #12336