Github user ivanko2000 commented on the issue:
https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/16609
I am a Spark newbie so I might not be aware of some obvious features, but
nonetheless: I consider the usefulness of a metadata field like "name" (not
necessarily unique on a global/session level) for a DataFrame/Dataset object to
go beyond the purely visual UI/'storage tab' use case (which apparently can be
achieved through other means, like temp view).
It could be used as an identifier/selector in a collection of dataframes,
either for internal 'business' logic or for integration purposes with 'outside'
components that could expose those dataframes with a human-readable name if the
developer/owner considered it useful to assign one (the latter does seem
similar to the "temp view" use case, but here the name/label is strictly a
metadata element of the dataframe itself, so there is no need to track is
separately).
Actually, I see that the Dataset's **as**(_alias_) can be used just for
that purpose: although it appears to be a "set-only" property (for use as
'alias' in SQL queries) and not intended to be read back, there is a fairly
straightforward way of retrieving it:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/41249806/how-can-i-retrieve-the-alias-for-a-dataframe-in-spark
However, since the "accessor" appears to be version-sensitive, it would be
preferable to have a stable public accessor for this name/alias property.
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