Adjusting Data Processing by Splitting Data¶

Unlike source code version-control systems, such as Git, that mostly store and version text files, Pachyderm does not perform intra-file diffing. This means that if you have a 10,000 lines CSV file and change a single line in that file, a pipeline that is subscribed to the repository where that file is located processes the whole file. You can adjust this behavior by splitting your file upon loading into chunks.

Pachyderm applies diffing at per file level. Therefore, if one bit of a file changes, Pachyderm identifies that change as a new file. Similarly, Pachyderm can only distribute computation at the level of a single file. If your data is stored in one large file, it can only be processed by a single worker, which might affect performance.

To optimize performance and processing time, you might want to break up large files into smaller chunks while Pachyderm uploads data to an input repository. For simple data types, you can run the pachctl put file command with the --split flag. For more complex splitting pattern, such as when you work with .avro or other binary formats, you need to manually split your data either at ingest or by configuring splitting in a Pachyderm pipeline.

Using Split and Target-File Flags¶

For common file types that are often used in data science, such as CSV, line-delimited text files, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) files, Pachyderm includes the --split, --target-file-bytes, and --target-file-datums flags.

If you specify both --target-file-datums and --target-file-bytes flags, Pachyderm creates split-files until it hits one of the constraints.

Example: Splitting a File¶

In this example, you have a 50-line file called my-data.txt. You create a repository named line-data and load my-data.txt into that repository. Then, you can analyze how the data is split in the repository.

To complete this example, perform the following steps:

1. Create a file with fifty lines named my-data.txt. You can add random lines, such as numbers from one to fifty, or US states, or anything else.

   Examples:

   Zero
   One
   Two
   Three
   ...
   Fifty
   

2. Create a repository called line-data:

   pachctl create repo line-data
   pachctl put file line-data@master -f my-data.txt --split line
   

3. List the filesystem objects in the repository:

   pachctl list file line-data@master
   

   System Response:

   NAME         TYPE  SIZE
   /my-data.txt dir   1.071KiB
   

   The pachctl list file command shows that the line-oriented file my-data.txt that was uploaded has been transformed into a directory that includes the chunks of the original my-data.txt file. Each chunk is put into a split-file and given a 16-character filename, left-padded with 0. Pachyderm numbers each filename sequentially in hexadecimal. We modify the command to list the contents of “my-data.txt”, and the output reveals the naming structure.

4. List the files in the my-data.txt directory:

   pachctl list file line-data@master my-data.txt
   

   System Response:

   NAME                          TYPE  SIZE
   /my-data.txt/0000000000000000 file  21B
   /my-data.txt/0000000000000001 file  22B
   /my-data.txt/0000000000000002 file  24B
   /my-data.txt/0000000000000003 file  21B
   ...
   NAME                          TYPE  SIZE
   /my-data.txt/0000000000000031 file  22B
   

Example: Appending to files with -–split¶

Combining --split with the default append behavior of pachctl put file enables flexible and scalable processing of record-oriented file data from external, legacy systems.

Pachyderm ensures that only the newly added data gets processed when you append to an existing file by using --split. Pachyderm optimizes storage utilization by automatically deduplicating each split-file. If you split a large file with many duplicate lines or objects with identical hashes might use less space in PFS than it does as a single file outside of PFS.

To complete this example, follow these steps:

1. Create a file count.txt with the following lines:

   Zero
   One
   Two
   Three
   Four
   

2. Put the count.txt file into a Pachyderm repository called raw_data:

   pachctl put file -f count.txt raw_data@master --split line
   

   This command splits the count.txt file by line and creates a separate file with one line in each file. Also, this operation creates five datums that are processed by the pipelines that use this repository as input.

3. View the repository contents:

   pachctl list file raw_data@master
   

   System Response:

   NAME       TYPE SIZE
   /count.txt dir  24B
   

   Pachyderm created a directory called count.txt.

4. View the contents of the count.txt directory:

   pachctl list file raw_data@master:count.txt
   

   System Response:

   NAME                        TYPE SIZE
   /count.txt/0000000000000000 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000001 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000002 file 6B
   /count.txt/0000000000000003 file 5B
   /count.txt/0000000000000004 file 5B
   

   In the output above, you can see that Pachyderm created five split-files from the original count.txt file. Each file has one line from the original count.txt. You can check the contents of each file by running the pachctl get file command. For example, to get the contents of count.txt/0000000000000000, run the following command:

   pachctl get file raw_data@master:count.txt/0000000000000000
   

   System Response:

   Zero
   

   This operation creates five datums that are processed by the pipelines that use this repository as input.

5. Create a one-line file called more-count.txt with the following content:

   Five
   

6. Load this file into Pachyderm by appending it to the count.txt file:

   pachctl put file raw_data@master:count.txt -f more-count.txt --split line
   

   • If you do not specify --split flag while appending to a file that was previously split, Pachyderm displays the following error message:

     could not put file at "/count.txt"; a file of type directory is already there
     

7. Verify that another file was added:

   pachctl list file raw_data@master:count.txt
   

   System Response:

   NAME                        TYPE SIZE
   /count.txt/0000000000000000 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000001 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000002 file 6B
   /count.txt/0000000000000003 file 5B
   /count.txt/0000000000000004 file 5B
   /count.txt/0000000000000005 file 4B
   

   The /count.txt/0000000000000005 file was added to the input repository. Pachyderm considers this new file as a separate datum. Therefore, pipelines process only that datum instead of all the chunks of count.txt.

8. Get the contents of the /count.txt/0000000000000005 file:

   pachctl get file raw_data@master:count.txt/0000000000000005
   

   System Response:

   Five
   

Example: Overwriting Files with –-split¶

The behavior of Pachyderm when a file loaded with --split is overwritten is simple to explain but subtle in its implications. Most importantly, it can have major implications when new rows are inserted within the file as opposed to just being appended to the end. The loaded file is split into those sequentially-named files, as shown above. If any of those resulting split-files hashes differently than the one it is replacing, it causes the Pachyderm Pipeline System to process that data. This can have significant consequences for downstream processing.

To complete this example, follow these steps:

1. Create a file count.txt with the following lines:

   One
   Two
   Three
   Four
   Five
   

2. Put the file into a Pachyderm repository called raw_data:

   pachctl put file -f count.txt raw_data@master --split line
   

   This command splits the count.txt file by line and creates a separate file with one line in each file. Also, this operation creates five datums that are processed by the pipelines that use this repository as input.

3. View the repository contents:

   pachctl list file raw_data@master
   

   System Response:

   NAME       TYPE SIZE
   /count.txt dir  24B
   

   Pachyderm created a directory called count.txt.

4. View the contents of the count.txt directory:

   pachctl list file raw_data@master:count.txt
   

   System Response:

   NAME                        TYPE SIZE
   /count.txt/0000000000000000 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000001 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000002 file 6B
   /count.txt/0000000000000003 file 5B
   /count.txt/0000000000000004 file 5B
   

   In the output above, you can see that Pachyderm created five split-files from the original count.txt file. Each file has one line from the original count.txt file. You can check the contents of each file by running the pachctl get file command. For example, to get the contents of count.txt/0000000000000000, run the following command:

   pachctl get file raw_data@master:count.txt/0000000000000000
   

   System Response:

   One
   

5. In your local directory, modify the original count.txt file by inserting the word Zero on the first line:

   Zero
   One
   Two
   Three
   Four
   Five
   

6. Upload the updated count.txt file into the raw_data repository by using the --split and --overwrite flags:

   pachctl put file -f count.txt raw_data@master:count.txt --split line --overwrite
   

   Because Pachyderm takes the file name into account when hashing data for a pipeline, it considers every single split-file as new, and the pipelines that use this repository as input process all six datums.

7. List the files in the directory:

   pachctl list file raw_data@master:count.txt
   

   System Response:

   NAME                        TYPE SIZE
   /count.txt/0000000000000000 file 5B
   /count.txt/0000000000000001 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000002 file 4B
   /count.txt/0000000000000003 file 6B
   /count.txt/0000000000000004 file 5B
   /count.txt/0000000000000005 file 5B
   

   The /count.txt/0000000000000000 file now has the newly added Zero line. To verify the contents of the file, run:

   pachctl get file raw_data@master:count.txt/0000000000000000
   

   System Response:

   Zero