Ok I see, thanks Lukasz. I will try this out tomorrow.

Sorry for the confusing question!

Josh

On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 10:01 PM, Lukasz Cwik <[email protected]> wrote:

> Based upon your descriptions, it seemed like you wanted limited
> parallelism because of an external dependency.
>
> Your best bet would be to use the global window combined with a
> StatefulDoFn. See this blog post (https://beam.apache.org/blog/
> 2017/02/13/stateful-processing.html) about the StatefulDoFn.
>
> You will not be able to use a different window function till after the
> StatefulDoFn otherwise a GroupByKey may schedule your work on a different
> machine since the windows for a key may differ.
>
> Source -> StatefulDoFn -> Window.into(my other window type)
>
> All our sources currently operate within the global window until a
> Window.into happens. So there is no need to do Source ->
> Window.into(GlobalWindow) -> StatefulDoFn -> Window.into(my other window
> type)
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 12:03 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hmm ok, I don't quite get why what I want to do isn't supported in Beam
>> ... I don't actually have a limited parallelism requirement, I just want to
>> be able to partition my unbounded stream by a key determined from the
>> elements, so that any two elements with the same key will be routed to the
>> same worker. I want to do this because my DoFn keeps some in-memory cached
>> state for each key (which I was planning to store at either DoFn or JVM
>> level). Does this sound like a bad idea?
>>
>>
>> On 6 Jun 2017, at 19:14, Lukasz Cwik <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Your right, the window acts as a secondary key within GroupByKey
>> (KeyA,Window1 != KeyA,Window2), which means that each of those two
>> composite keys can be scheduled to execute at the same time.
>>
>> At this point I think you should challenge your limited parallelism
>> requirement as you'll need to build something outside of Apache Beam to
>> provide these parallelization limits across windows (e.g. lock within the
>> same process when limiting yourself to a single machine, distributed lock
>> service when dealing with multiple machines).
>>
>> The backlog of data is either going to grow infinitely at the GroupByKey
>> or grow infinitely at the source if your pipeline can't keep up. It is up
>> to the Runner to be smart and not produce a giant backlog at the GroupByKey
>> since it knows how fast work is being completed (unfortunately I don't know
>> if any Runner is this smart yet to push the backlog up to the source).
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 11:03 AM, Josh <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I see, thanks for the tips!
>>>
>>> Last question about this! How could this be adapted to work in a
>>> unbounded/streaming job? To work in an unbounded job, I need to put a
>>> Window.into with a trigger before GroupByKey.
>>> I guess this would mean that the "shard gets processed by a single
>>> thread in MyDofn" guarantee will only apply to messages within a single
>>> window, and would not apply across windows?
>>> If this is the case, is there a better solution? I would like to avoid
>>> buffering data in windows, and want the shard guarantee to apply across
>>> windows.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Lukasz Cwik <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Your code looks like what I was describing. My only comment would be to
>>>> use a deterministic hashing function which is stable across JVM versions
>>>> and JVM instances as it will help in making your pipeline consistent across
>>>> different runs/environments.
>>>>
>>>> Parallelizing across 8 instances instead of 4 would break the contract
>>>> around GroupByKey (since it didn't group all the elements for a key
>>>> correctly). Also, each element is the smallest unit of work and
>>>> specifically in your pipeline you have chosen to reduce all your elements
>>>> into 4 logical elements (each containing some proportion of your original
>>>> data).
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 9:37 AM, Josh <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the reply, Lukasz.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What I meant was that I want to shard my data by a "shard key", and be
>>>>> sure that any two elements with the same "shard key" are processed by the
>>>>> same thread on the same worker. (Or if that's not possible, by the same
>>>>> worker JVM with no thread guarantee would be good enough). It doesn't
>>>>> actually matter to me whether there's 1 or 4 or 100 DoFn instances
>>>>> processing the data.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> It sounds like what you suggested will work for this, with the
>>>>> downside of me needing to choose a number of shards/DoFns (e.g. 4).
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems a bit long and messy but am I right in thinking it would look
>>>>> like this? ...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> PCollection<MyElement> elements = ...;
>>>>>
>>>>> elements
>>>>>
>>>>> .apply(MapElements
>>>>>
>>>>> .into(TypeDescriptors.kvs(TypeDescriptors.integers(),
>>>>> TypeDescriptor.of(MyElement.class)))
>>>>>
>>>>> .via((MyElement e) -> KV.of(
>>>>>
>>>>> e.getKey().toString().hashCode() % 4, e)))
>>>>>
>>>>> .apply(GroupByKey.create())
>>>>>
>>>>> .apply(Partition.of(4,
>>>>>
>>>>> (Partition.PartitionFn<KV<Integer, Iterable<MyElement>>>) (kv, i) ->
>>>>> kv.getKey()))
>>>>>
>>>>> .apply(ParDo.of(new MyDofn()));
>>>>>
>>>>> // Where MyDofn must be changed to handle a KV<Integer,
>>>>> Iterable<MyElement>> as input instead of just a MyElement
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I was wondering is there a guarantee that the runner won't parallelise
>>>>> the final MyDofn across e.g. 8 instances instead of 4? If there are two
>>>>> input elements with the same key are they actually guaranteed to be
>>>>> processed on the same instance?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> Josh
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 4:51 PM, Lukasz Cwik <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I think this is what your asking for but your statement about 4
>>>>>> instances is unclear as to whether that is 4 copies of the same DoFn or 4
>>>>>> completely different DoFns. Also its unclear what you mean by
>>>>>> instance/thread, I'm assuming that you want at most 4 instances of a DoFn
>>>>>> each being processed by a single thread.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is a bad idea because you limit your parallelism but this is
>>>>>> similar to what the default file sharding logic does. In Apache Beam the
>>>>>> smallest unit of output for a GroupByKey is a single key+iterable pair. 
>>>>>> We
>>>>>> exploit this by assigning all our values to a fixed number of keys and 
>>>>>> then
>>>>>> performing a GroupByKey. This is the same trick that powers the file
>>>>>> sharding logic in AvroIO/TextIO/...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your pipeline would look like (fixed width font diagram):
>>>>>> your data      -> apply shard key       -> GroupByKey        ->
>>>>>> partition by key -> your dofn #1
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            \> your dofn #2
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            \> ...
>>>>>> a  / b / c / d -> 1,a / 2,b / 1,c / 2,d -> 1,[a,c] / 2,[b,d] -> ???
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is not exactly the same as processing a single DoFn
>>>>>> instance/thread because it relies on the Runner to be able to schedule 
>>>>>> each
>>>>>> key to be processed on a different machine. For example a Runner may 
>>>>>> choose
>>>>>> to process value 1,[a,c] and 2,[b,d] sequentially on the same machine or
>>>>>> may choose to distribute them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 8:13 AM, Josh <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hey Lukasz,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I have a follow up question about this -
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What if I want to do something very similar, but instead of with 4
>>>>>>> instances of AvroIO following the partition transform, I want 4 
>>>>>>> instances
>>>>>>> of a DoFn that I've written. I want to ensure that each partition is
>>>>>>> processed by a single DoFn instance/thread. Is this possible with Beam?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>> Josh
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Josh <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Ahh I see - Ok I'll try out this solution then. Thanks Lukasz!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 5:20 PM, Lukasz Cwik <[email protected]>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Google Cloud Dataflow won't override your setting. The dynamic
>>>>>>>>> sharding occurs if you don't explicitly set a numShard value.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 9:14 AM, Josh <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Hi Lukasz,
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Thanks for the example. That sounds like a nice solution -
>>>>>>>>>> I am running on Dataflow though, which dynamically sets numShards
>>>>>>>>>> - so if I set numShards to 1 on each of those AvroIO writers, I 
>>>>>>>>>> can't be
>>>>>>>>>> sure that Dataflow isn't going to override my setting right? I guess 
>>>>>>>>>> this
>>>>>>>>>> should work fine as long as I partition my stream into a large enough
>>>>>>>>>> number of partitions so that Dataflow won't override numShards.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Josh
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Lukasz Cwik <[email protected]>
>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Since your using a small number of shards, add a Partition
>>>>>>>>>>> transform which uses a deterministic hash of the key to choose one 
>>>>>>>>>>> of 4
>>>>>>>>>>> partitions. Write each partition with a single shard.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> (Fixed width diagram below)
>>>>>>>>>>> Pipeline -> AvroIO(numShards = 4)
>>>>>>>>>>> Becomes:
>>>>>>>>>>> Pipeline -> Partition --> AvroIO(numShards = 1)
>>>>>>>>>>>                       |-> AvroIO(numShards = 1)
>>>>>>>>>>>                       |-> AvroIO(numShards = 1)
>>>>>>>>>>>                       \-> AvroIO(numShards = 1)
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 1:05 AM, Josh <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> I am using a FileBasedSink (AvroIO.write) on an unbounded
>>>>>>>>>>>> stream (withWindowedWrites, hourly windows, numShards=4).
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> I would like to partition the stream by some key in the
>>>>>>>>>>>> element, so that all elements with the same key will get processed 
>>>>>>>>>>>> by the
>>>>>>>>>>>> same shard writer, and therefore written to the same file. Is 
>>>>>>>>>>>> there a way
>>>>>>>>>>>> to do this? Note that in my stream the number of keys is very 
>>>>>>>>>>>> large (most
>>>>>>>>>>>> elements have a unique key, while a few elements share a key).
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>>>>>> Josh
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>

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