[jira] [Created] (MAHOUT-1236) Need a cleaned up serialized format for Vectors to handle names and all other kinds of things

["Ted Dunning (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

Ted Dunning created MAHOUT-1236:
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             Summary: Need a cleaned up serialized format for Vectors to handle names and all other kinds of things
                 Key: MAHOUT-1236
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-1236
             Project: Mahout
          Issue Type: Bug
            Reporter: Ted Dunning


Our current serialization is subject several ills

a) it breaks alignment by having a 1 byte flag field (evil, generic)

b) it doesn't handle any kind of extensible format like protobufs so it isn't future-proof

c) it doesn't handle named vectors very well

d) it totally breaks with any other kind of decoration as with Centroids or WeightedVector or ... (see b)

I propose that we use the current tag byte on the current serialization with a new flag bit that indicates that the vector will use a protobuf encoding.  Then 3 bytes will be skipped to restore alignment.  Then there will be a protobuf encoding for the vector. 

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