[jira] [Updated] (BEAM-1283) DoFn finishBundle should be required to specify the window

["Kenneth Knowles (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-1283?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Kenneth Knowles updated BEAM-1283:
----------------------------------
    Summary: DoFn finishBundle should be required to specify the window  (was: DoFn.Context.output spec for startBundle/finishBundle is a mess)

> DoFn finishBundle should be required to specify the window
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: BEAM-1283
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/BEAM-1283
>             Project: Beam
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: beam-model, sdk-java-core
>            Reporter: Kenneth Knowles
>            Assignee: Kenneth Knowles
>              Labels: backward-incompatible
>             Fix For: First stable release
>
>
> The spec is here in Javadoc: https://github.com/apache/beam/blob/master/sdks/java/core/src/main/java/org/apache/beam/sdk/transforms/DoFn.java#L128
> "If invoked from {{@StartBundle}} or {{@FinishBundle}}, this will attempt to use the {{WindowFn}} of the input {{PCollection}} to determine what windows the element should be in, throwing an exception if the {{WindowFn}} attempts to access any information about the input element. The output element will have a timestamp of negative infinity."
> This is a collection of caveats that make this method not always technically wrong, but quite a mess. Ideas that reasonable folks have suggested lately:
>  - The {{WindowFn}} cannot actually be applied because {{WindowFn}} is allowed to see the element type. The spec just avoids this by limiting which {{WindowFn}} can be used.
>  - There is no natural output timestamp, so it should always be provided. The spec avoids this by specifying an arbitrary and fairly useless timestamp.
>  - If it is a merging {{WindowFn}} like sessions that has already been merged then you'll just have a bogus proto window regardless of explicit timestamp or not.
> The use cases for these methods are best addressed by state plus window expiry callback, so we should revisit this spec and probably just wipe it.



--
This message was sent by Atlassian JIRA
(v6.3.15#6346)