[jira] Created: (HDFS-1742) Provide hooks / callbacks to execute some code based on events happening in HDFS (file / directory creation, opening, closing, etc)

["Mikhail Yakshin (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

Provide hooks / callbacks to execute some code based on events happening in HDFS (file / directory creation, opening, closing, etc)
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                 Key: HDFS-1742
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HDFS-1742
             Project: Hadoop HDFS
          Issue Type: New Feature
          Components: name-node
            Reporter: Mikhail Yakshin


We're working on a system that runs various Hadoop job continuously, based on the data that appears in HDFS: for example, we have a job that works on day's worth of data and creates output in {{/output/YYYY/MM/DD}}. For input, it should wait for directory with externally uploaded data as {{/input/YYYY/MM/DD}} to appear, and also wait for previous day's data to appear, i.e. {{/output/YYYY/MM/DD-1}}.

Obviously, one of the possible solutions is polling once in a while for files/directories we're waiting for, but generally it's a bad solution. The better one is something like file alteration monitor or [inode activity notifiers|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify], such as ones implemented in Linux filesystems.

Basic idea is that one can specify (inject) some code that will be executed on every major event happening in HDFS, such as:
* File created / open
* File closed
* File deleted
* Directory created
* Directory deleted

I see simplistic implementation as following: NN defines some interfaces that implement callback/hook mechanism - i.e. something like:

{code}
interface NameNodeCallback {
    public void onFileCreate(SomeFileInformation f);
    public void onFileClose(SomeFileInformation f);
    public void onFileDelete(SomeFileInformation f);
    ...
}
{code}

A user creates a class that implements this method and loads it somehow (for example, using an extra jar in classpath) in NameNode's JVM. NameNode includes a configuration option that specifies names of such class(es) - then NameNode instantiates them and calls methods from them (in a separate thread) on every valid event happening.

This would allow systems such as I've described in the beginning to be implemented without polling.

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