Hi Bolke Speaking as a consultant who is constantly training other teams how to use airflow, I do frequently see this confusion. Another one is how the batch_date is always batch_date + interval or as the docs make it quite clear
"*Let’s Repeat That* The scheduler runs your job one schedule_interval AFTER the start date, at the END of the period." Renaming it would make it simpler for newbies, but essentially they will need to understand how Airflow behaves, execution_date being the batch execution date not the run_date of the DAG I am actually in the process of writing a blog post <https://samelamin.github.io/2017/04/27/Building-A-Datapipeline-part1/> about this which I could use peoples feedback If it helps, I find that explaining how backfills work and why they are important will drive home what the execution_date is :) Regards Sam On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 4:10 PM Bolke de Bruin <bdbr...@gmail.com> wrote: > I dont think this makes sense and I dont that think anyone had a real > issue with this. Execution date has been clearly documented and is part of > the core principles of airflow. Renaming will create more confusion. > > Please note that I do think that as an anonymous user you cannot speak for > any "new airflow user". That is a contradiction to me. > > Thanks > Bolke > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On 26 Sep 2018, at 07:59, airflowuser <airflowu...@protonmail.com.INVALID> > wrote: > > > > One of the most annoying, hard to understand and against all common > sense is the execution_date behavior. I assume that any new Airflow user > has been struggling with it. > > The amount of questions with answers referring to : > https://airflow.apache.org/scheduler.html?scheduling-triggers is > uncountable. > > > > Most people mistakenly think that execution_date is the datetime which > the DAG started to run. > > > > I suggest the following changes: > > 1. Renaming the execution_date to something else like: run_stamped > This name won't cause people to get confused. > > 2. Adding a new variable which indicated the actual datetime when the > DAG run was generated. call it execution_start_date. People seem to want > the information when the DAG actually started to be executed/run. > > > > This is only naming changes. No need to actual change the behavior - > This will only make things simpler as when user encounter run_stamped he > won't be confused by the name like execution_date >
