Ning, I believe Robert's questions from his email has not been answered yet.
On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 5:00 PM Ning Kang <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, I'll leave another 3 days for design > <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DYWrT6GL_qDCXhRMoxpjinlVAfHeVilK5Mtf8gO6zxQ/edit?usp=sharing> > review. > Then we can have a vote session if there is no objection. > > Thanks! > > On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 12:14 PM Ning Kang <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Thanks Ahmet for the introduction! >> >> I've composed a design overview >> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DYWrT6GL_qDCXhRMoxpjinlVAfHeVilK5Mtf8gO6zxQ/edit?usp=sharing> >> describing changes we are making to components around interactive runner. >> I'll share the document in our email thread too. >> >> The truth is since interactive runner is not yet a recognized runner as >> part of the Beam SDK (and it's fundamentally a wrapper around direct >> runner), we are not touching any Beam SDK components. >> We'll not change any behavior of existing Beam SDK and we'll try our best >> to keep it that way in the future. >> > My main concern at this point is the introduction of new concepts, even though these are not changing other parts of the Beam SDKs. It would be good to see at least an alternative option covered in the design document. The reason is each additional concept adds to the mental load of users. And also concepts from interactive Beam will shift user's expectations of Beam even though there are not direct SDK modifications. > >> In the meantime, I'll work on other components orthogonal to Beam such as >> Pipeline Display and Data Visualization I mentioned in the design overview. >> >> If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through this >> email address! >> >> Thanks! >> >> Regards, >> Ning. >> >> On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 5:01 PM Ahmet Altay <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Ning, thank you for the heads up. >>> >>> All, this is a proposed work for improving interactive Beam experience. >>> As mentioned in Ning's email, new concepts are being introduced. And in >>> addition iBeam as a name is used as a new reference. I hope that bringing >>> the discussion to the mailing list will give it the additional >>> visibility and more people could share their feedback. >>> >>> (cc'ing a few folks that might be interested +Robert Bradshaw >>> <[email protected]> +Valentyn Tymofieiev <[email protected]> +Sindy >>> Li <[email protected]> +Brian Hulette <[email protected]> ) >>> >>> Ahmet >>> >>> >>> On Wed, Aug 7, 2019 at 12:36 PM Ning Kang <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> To whom may concern, >>>> >>>> This is Ning from Google. We are currently making efforts to leverage >>>> an interactive runner under python beam sdk. >>>> >>>> There is already an interactive Beam (iBeam for short) runner with >>>> jupyter notebook in the repo >>>> <https://github.com/apache/beam/tree/master/sdks/python/apache_beam/runners/interactive> >>>> . >>>> Following the instructions on that page, one can set up an interactive >>>> environment to develop and execute Beam pipeline interactively. >>>> >>>> However, there are many issues with existing iBeam. One issue is that >>>> it uses a concept of leaf PCollection to cache and materialize intermediate >>>> PCollection. If the user wants to reuse/introspect a non-leaf PCollection, >>>> the interactive runner will run into errors. >>>> >>>> Our initial effort will be fixing the existing issues. And we also want >>>> to make iBeam easy to use. Since iBeam uses the same model Beam uses, there >>>> isn't really any difference for users between creating a pipeline with >>>> interactive runner and other runners. >>>> So we want to minimize the interfaces a user needs to learn while >>>> giving the user some capability to interact with the interactive >>>> environment. >>>> >>>> See this initial PR <https://github.com/apache/beam/pull/9278>, the >>>> interactive_beam module will provide mainly 4 interfaces: >>>> >>>> - For advanced users who define pipeline outside __main__, let them >>>> tell current interactive environment where they define their pipeline: >>>> watch() >>>> - This is very useful for tests where pipeline can be defined in >>>> test methods. >>>> - If the user simply creates pipeline in a Jupyter notebook or a >>>> plain Python script, they don't have to know/use this feature at all. >>>> - Let users create an interactive pipeline: create_pipeline() >>>> - invoking create_pipeline(), the user gets a Pipeline object >>>> that works as any other Pipeline object created from >>>> apache_beam.Pipeline() >>>> - However, the pipeline object p, when invoking p.run(), does >>>> some extra interactive magic. >>>> - We'll support interactive execution for DirectRunner at this >>>> moment. >>>> - Let users run the interactive pipeline as a normal pipeline: >>>> run_pipeline() >>>> - In an interactive environment, a user only needs to add and >>>> execute 1 line of code run_pipeline(pipeline) to execute any existing >>>> interactive pipeline object as normal pipeline in any selected >>>> platform. >>>> - We'll probably support Dataflow only. Other implementations >>>> can be added though. >>>> - Let users introspect any intermediate PCollection they have >>>> handler to: visualize() >>>> - If a user ever writes pcoll = p | "Some Transform" >> >>>> some_transform() ..., they can visualize(pcoll) once the pipeline p >>>> is >>>> executed. >>>> - p can be batch or streaming >>>> - The visualization will be some plot graph of data for the >>>> given PCollection as if it's materialized. If the PCollection is >>>> unbounded, >>>> the graph is dynamic. >>>> >>>> The PR will implement 1 and 2. >>>> >>>> We'll use https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-7923 as the top >>>> level JIRA and add blocking JIRAs as development goes. >>>> >>>> External Beam users will not worry about any of the underlying >>>> implementation details. >>>> Except the 4 interfaces above, they learn and write normal Beam code >>>> and can execute the pipeline immediately when they are done with >>>> prototyping. >>>> >>>> Ning. >>>> >>>
