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WIP: Docs draft for integration with DVC #323

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# Get Started DVC

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@omesser omesser Mar 9, 2023

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HL:
Suggest to add sub-headers / sections
And structure for this page will be something like this:

## Defining artifact types
... example of a model, defining in different ways
... mentioning that in a similar way you can define other types, e.g. `type: artifact` or similar

## Browsing Artifacts
.. studio
... dvc ls

## Additional artifact metadata
...

## Registered artifact versions
...
## Working with artifacts in CI
...
## Restricting which types are allowed
...

To leverage concepts of Model and Data Registries in a more explicit way, you
can denote the `type` of each output. This will let you browse models and data
separately, address them by `name` in `dvc get`, and eventually, see them in DVC
Studio.

Let's start with marking an artifact as data or model.
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Let's start with marking an artifact as data or model.
Let's start with marking a tracked artifact (file) as a `model`.

Personally, I don't think that "data" is a valid example for a type

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@aguschin aguschin Mar 9, 2023

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Why? I assumed Data Registry would show type: data once we implement it.

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It carries 0 information though, right?
"data of type data", similar to "artifact of type artifact" means the same as not defining type at all. it's the most general thing there is (data even more than artifact maybe?), just super abstract. doubt users will use it that way

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Good point. Maybe it's dataset instead of data then? Or anyways, if after subtracting plots, metrics and models everything that's left (among DVC PL inputs and outputs) is dataset, then I guess it's redundant?

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My 2cs. Data is not abstract for me (it's different vs model in my perception). But in DVC it's not needed. Any out w/o a specified type can be considered data.

I would personally try to simplify all of this - no multiple types initially. only models. We are prematurely generalizing this I think.

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I think of the terms Data Registry, Model Registry, and Artifact Registry. I like having the type track to those names, so I like data.

Would love to keep the idea of data registry support around, haven't thought a lot about using gto for that, but certainly have thought about models and binaries.

I would love to use/try gto as an Artifact Registry for build artifacts - specifically compiled binaries. It might also be interesting to use as a Container Registry - there are lots of solutions in this space like Jfrog Artifactory, cloudsmith, GCP. If you wanted to be really fancy you could support some of those offerings as backends.

With all of that said I think prioritizing the Model Registry use case makes a lot of sense, a Data Registry would be my next priority. The solution seems like it may be general enough to support an Artifact Registry and Container Registry, might be worth doing some thinking about it and if it does make sense and there are advantages to keeping that in gto then keep that use case in mind while making the Model Registry experience awesome.

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Trying to think of advantages of having gto also be a Container Registry and remembered that mlem can deploy docker containers, it would be nice to have the versioning of those container artifacts in gto and be able to reference with gto syntax.

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If I might chip in as a user - I absolutely would like GTO to be used also to build a data(set) registry (together with DVC) and possibly a combined data(set) and model registry.

In fact, we intend to use GTO and DVC to build a dataset registry for one (fairly large) client in the coming weeks. By the way, while stuff like MLFlow is a viable alternative to the GTO+MLEM-based model registry (it does not have all of its features but has some others), I don't know any open source alternative to a GTO+DVC-based dataset registry (and general I've yet to see data versioning done better than with DVC)...which means it is a very good selling point IMO.

I like the idea of viewing GTO as a tool to build pretty much any artifact registry, though models and datasets are the most likely use-cases.


If you're using `dvc add` to track your artifact, you'll need to run:

```dvc
# note that all CLI options are optional:
$ dvc add models/mymodel.pkl \
--type model \ # this makes DVC understand it's an ML model
--name def-detector \
--description "glass defect image classifier" \
--label "algo=cnn" \
--label "owner=aguschin" \
--label "project=prod-qual-002"
```

<details>

### Beside tracking this as usually, his will add it to a top section called `registry` in your `dvc.yaml`

```yaml
# dvc.yaml
registry:
def-detector: # just like with plots, this could be a path or any string ID
type: model
description: glass defect image classifier
labels:
- algo=cnn
- owner=aguschin
- project=prod-qual-002
path: models/mymodel.pkl # specify path if use alias to name this
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```

If you want this to be in a separate file (say, `artifacts.yaml`), you can tell
DVC to use it with:

```yaml
# dvc.yaml
registry: artifacts.yaml
```
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@aguschin aguschin Mar 10, 2023

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Extra for now, but was requested by users

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Love this! I would love to do this with plots too.


</details>

If you're producing your models in DVC pipeline, you can edit `registry` section
or `artifacts.yaml` yourself (or simply run the same `dvc add` command which
will do that for you) and then reference the output by ID or path in `deps` or
`outs`:

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Now I think there is a user case this change may not support that well. One of our prospects asked to allow a single file (let's say mymodel.pkl) to be referenced as several GTO models (e.g. model1 and model2 - these are names). Since moving to DVC makes path essential (instead of name), I don't see how that feature would fit here. 🤔

The motivation is to be able to promote model1 and model2 to different stages at different moments of time separately. To clarify, let's assume there are two populations mymodel.pkl should be applied for. You can create stages like populationA-prod, populationA-staging and populationB-prod, populationB-staging, if you have many populations, this would make things cumbersome. The solution was to introduce model1 (for populationA) and model2 (for populationB). That required this feature.

The only workaround I see now is to create a "mirror file" with cp mymodel.pkl mymodel-for-populationB.pkl in some DVC PL stage. Or keep this name:path mapping outside of DVC somehow. Do you see any other solutions guys? WDYT?

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Agree with @omesser that it's related the discussion above. Take a look at the top-level plots schema, where plots may be identified by either path or an arbitrary name. Feels like following a similar syntax may be best here.

```yaml
# dvc.yaml
stages:
train:
cmd: python train.py
deps:
- data.xml
outs:
- def-detector # or "models/mymodel.pkl" instead
```

You can also specify that while using DVCLive, which will also add your model to
the `registry` section in `dvc.yaml`:

```py
# you can pass `name`, `description`, `labels` as well
live.log_artifact(artifact, "path", type="model")
```

This will make them appear in DVC Model Registry:
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Suggested change
This will make them appear in DVC Model Registry:
This will make them appear in [Studio Model Registry](https://dvc.org/doc/studio/user-guide/model-registry/what-is-a-model-registry):

(Fo now,. it's still called Studio and not DVC.Cloud or similar)

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Thanks! Overall, let's keep the review scope to the level of ideas and user experience. We don't even know if this will be a separate page in DVC docs, or maybe we integrate it with some other page.

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yeah this is a nitpick 😉 but was hard for me to pass the opportunity and suggest


![](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6797716/223443152-84f57b79-3395-4965-97f9-edc81896a1dc.png)

and make them shown as models in `dvc ls`:

```dvc
$ dvc ls --registry # add `--type model` to see models only
Path Name Type Labels Description
mymodel.pkl model
data.xml stackoverflow-dataset data data-registry,get-started imported code
data/data.xml another-dataset data data-registry,get-started imported
```
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Does Studio need this, or is solely to provide a CLI option to view the registry? I don't think the latter needs to be high priority unless I'm missing some use case where you need to access it from the CLI.

Not sure whether it can fit into dvc ls since the output is quite different (and potentially so are the arguments like --type). Need to think about whether we need this and where it can fit.

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By the way, do we define an artifact as any output that has a type?

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some use case where you need to access it from the CLI

If user would like to download a model locally, but not quite sure which one at the moment, he might want to see this. E.g. I don't remember the model name, but know labels or remember description. This OFC can be solved via Studio, and if we want to push users for that, that's also a decision.

Another use case would be if you're investigating a repo that's not familiar to you (let's say your team has few repos or you look at another team's repo). Again, if we want to make people go to Studio every time for this, it a valid workflow, but IMO it makes you leave CLI and do extra things which can't be inconvenient.

By the way, do we define an artifact as any output that has a type?

Either that, or any input/output file DVC keeps track of can be an artifact (without type in it's not defined). I think the latter is simpler and easier to convey. We can call it "file" instead of "artifact" I guess (if we're not going to introduce "compound" artifacts as we discussed before which I don't think is the case. Let's probably don't discuss this though, it's unrelated to this PR and not necessary at all now I believe).

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Sounds good. Not sure I see enough to make it a p1 yet. WDYT?

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By the way, do we define an artifact as any output that has a type?

Either that, or any input/output file DVC keeps track of can be an artifact (without type in it's not defined). I think the latter is simpler and easier to convey.

It might also depend on the schema discussion below. If we have a model/registry/artifacts section of dvc.yaml, I guess we will only include what's specified there.


The same way you specify `type`, you can specify `description`, `labels` and
`name`. Defining human-readable `name` (should be unique) is useful when you
have complex folder structures or if you artifact can have different paths
during the project lifecycle.
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I think here we need 1 (concise) example setting all relevant fields
e.g.

dvc add models/mymodel.pkl --name def-detector --type model --description "glass defect image classifier" --label "algo=cnn" --label "owner=aguschin" --label "project=prod-qual-002"


You can use `name` to address the object in `dvc get`:

```dvc
$ dvc get $REPO def-detector -o model.pkl
```

Now, you usually need a specific model version rather than one from the `main`
branch. You can keep track of the model's lineage by
[registering Semantic versions and promoting your models](/doc/gto/get-started)
(or other artifacts) to stages such as `dev` or `production` with GTO. GTO
operates by creating Git tags such as `[email protected]` or `mymodel#prod`.
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I thought the stage tags always had some number like mymodel#prod#1?

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It can be mymodel#prod as well. It's called "simple" Git tag format and it's not the default one. https://mlem.ai/doc/gto/user-guide/#git-tags-format

Knowing the right Git tag, you can get the model locally:

```dvc
$ dvc get $REPO mymodel.pkl --rev [email protected]
```

Check out
[GTO User Guide](/doc/gto/user-guide/#getting-artifacts-in-systems-downstream)
to learn how to get the Git tag of the `latest` version or version currently
promoted to stages like `prod`.

<details>

### Getting `latest` or what's in `prod` directly with DVC [extra for now]

(This can be implemented, but for now we decided not to - let's wait and see)

You can also use shortcuts in `dvc get`:

```dvc
$ dvc get $REPO def-detector@latest # download the latest version
$ dvc get $REPO def-detector#prod # download what's in prod
```

</details>

## Getting models in CI/CD

Git tags are great to [kick off CI/CD](/doc/gto/user-guide/#acting-in-cicd)
pipeline in which we can consume our model. You can use
[GTO GitHub action](https://github.com/iterative/gto-action) to interpret the
Git tag that triggered the workflow and act based on that. If you simply need to
download the model to CI, you can also use this Action with `download` option:

```yaml
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v3
- id: gto
uses: iterative/gto-action@v1
with:
download: True # you can provide a specific destination path here instead of `True`
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Can you give an example? Will it download all artifacts in the repo?

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This should download the artifact, e.g. it will run dvc get . mymodel --rev $GITHUB_REF for a Git tag [email protected].

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Updated docs to explain this.

```

Which means, if the Git tag that triggered this workflow registers a version or
promotes it to a stage (like `[email protected]` or `mymodel#prod`), this will run
`dvc get . mymodel`.

## Restricting which types are allowed [extra for now]

To specify which `type`s are allowed to be used, you can add the following to
your `.dvc/config`:

```
# .dvc/config
types: [model, data]
```

## Seeing new model versions pushed with DVC experiments
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Suggested change
## Seeing new model versions pushed with DVC experiments
## Models and Experiments

Also, a question - is this an implicit behavior for artifacts with type: model specifically? or will there be similar side effects for any artifact with "type" defined?

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This only updated MDP, so this is only for type: model for now. How did you assume this should work with other types?

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I didn't, I'm a bit concerned for implicit behaviors, we should probably find a way to give the user control over what to do with which artifacts on exp push. wdyt?

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What example of implicit behavior you have in mind? Like pushing a model that can be few GB in size? Not quite have specific examples in mind.

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yes, auto-pushing, exactly. maybe auto-versioning as well in the future (could be useful if running in the pipeline CI-CD as part of release. generate model, push it, and assign a version using GTO


After you run `dvc exp push` to push your experiment that updates your model,
you'll see a commit candidate to be registered:
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Do you think we should allow registration of unmerged experiments? Or maybe restrict what actions are available for them?

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Good question. Don't have a strong opinion.
First, it's possible to do, so why not. We can also allow to click on "register", but then say something like "We advise to merge the experiment first" with buttons like "create a PR in GH" (default) and "register anyway".
We can prohibit registering (again, don't see a reason except for skipping polluting repo with dangling refs in a the workflow that requires users to merge experiments first).
We can delay answering this question for now I think.

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Btw, do we have an understanding how dvc exp push flow should look like on Studio's side? If that's still WIP, I guess we need to implement that first.


![](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6797716/223444959-d8ddd1a0-5582-405f-9ab0-807e1a0c9489.png)

Please note it's usually a good idea to merge your experiment before registering
a semantic version to avoid creating dangling commits (not reachable from any
branch).

In future you'll also be able to compare that new model version pushed (even non
semver-registered) with the latest one on this Model Details Page. Or have a
button to go to the main repo view with "compare" enabled:

![](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6797716/223445799-7ae65e58-6a9e-42a8-890a-f04839349873.png)
5 changes: 5 additions & 0 deletions content/docs/sidebar.json
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"label": "Get Started",
"source": "get-started.md"
},
{
"slug": "get-started-dvc",
"label": "Get Started for DVC",
"source": "get-started-dvc.md"
},
{
"slug": "user-guide",
"label": "User Guide",
Expand Down