+1. SideInput and SideOutput probably make new user confused. It is different behavior. BTW, is it also better to change "main output" to "default output" when user does not explicitly specify an output tag?
Regards Jian Liu(Basti) -----Original Message----- From: Thomas Groh [mailto:tg...@google.com.INVALID] Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2017 4:56 AM To: dev@beam.apache.org Subject: Renaming SideOutput Hey everyone: I'd like to rename DoFn.Context#sideOutput to #output (in the Java SDK). Having two methods, both named output, one which takes the "main output type" and one that takes a tag to specify the type more clearly communicates the actual behavior - sideOutput isn't a "special" way to output, it's the same as output(T), just to a specified PCollection. This will help pipeline authors understand the actual behavior of outputting to a tag, and detangle it from "sideInput", which is a special way to receive input. Giving them the same name means that it's not even strange to call output and provide the main output type, which is what we want - it's a more specific way to output, but does not have different restrictions or capabilities. This is also a pretty small change within the SDK - it touches about 20 files, and the changes are pretty automatic. Thanks, Thomas
