5/28/2019 Spark SQL and DataFrames - Spark 2.2.

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2.2.0

Spark SQL, DataFrames and Datasets Guide

Overview
SQL
Datasets and DataFrames
Getting Started
Starting Point: SparkSession
Creating DataFrames
Untyped Dataset Operations (aka DataFrame Operations)
Running SQL Queries Programmatically
Global Temporary View
Creating Datasets
Interoperating with RDDs
Inferring the Schema Using Reflection
Programmatically Specifying the Schema
Aggregations
Untyped User-Defined Aggregate Functions
Type-Safe User-Defined Aggregate Functions
Data Sources
Generic Load/Save Functions
Manually Specifying Options
Run SQL on files directly
Save Modes
Saving to Persistent Tables
Bucketing, Sorting and Partitioning
Parquet Files
Loading Data Programmatically
Partition Discovery
Schema Merging
Hive metastore Parquet table conversion
Hive/Parquet Schema Reconciliation
Metadata Refreshing
Configuration
JSON Datasets
Hive Tables
Specifying storage format for Hive tables
Interacting with Different Versions of Hive Metastore
JDBC To Other Databases
Troubleshooting
Performance Tuning
Caching Data In Memory
Other Configuration Options
Distributed SQL Engine
Running the Thrift JDBC/ODBC server
Running the Spark SQL CLI
Migration Guide
Upgrading From Spark SQL 2.1 to 2.2
Upgrading From Spark SQL 2.0 to 2.1

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Upgrading From Spark SQL 1.6 to 2.0

Upgrading From Spark SQL 1.5 to 1.6
Upgrading From Spark SQL 1.4 to 1.5
Upgrading from Spark SQL 1.3 to 1.4
DataFrame data reader/writer interface
DataFrame.groupBy retains grouping columns
Behavior change on DataFrame.withColumn
Upgrading from Spark SQL 1.0-1.2 to 1.3
Rename of SchemaRDD to DataFrame
Unification of the Java and Scala APIs
Isolation of Implicit Conversions and Removal of dsl Package (Scala-only)
Removal of the type aliases in org.apache.spark.sql for DataType (Scala-only)
UDF Registration Moved to sqlContext.udf (Java & Scala)
Python DataTypes No Longer Singletons
Compatibility with Apache Hive
Deploying in Existing Hive Warehouses
Supported Hive Features
Unsupported Hive Functionality
Reference
Data Types
NaN Semantics

Overview
Spark SQL is a Spark module for structured data processing. Unlike the basic Spark RDD API, the interfaces provided
by Spark SQL provide Spark with more information about the structure of both the data and the computation being
performed. Internally, Spark SQL uses this extra information to perform extra optimizations. There are several ways to
interact with Spark SQL including SQL and the Dataset API. When computing a result the same execution engine is
used, independent of which API/language you are using to express the computation. This unification means that
developers can easily switch back and forth between different APIs based on which provides the most natural way to
express a given transformation.

All of the examples on this page use sample data included in the Spark distribution and can be run in the spark-shell,
pyspark shell, or sparkR shell.

SQL
One use of Spark SQL is to execute SQL queries. Spark SQL can also be used to read data from an existing Hive
installation. For more on how to configure this feature, please refer to the Hive Tables section. When running SQL from
within another programming language the results will be returned as a Dataset/DataFrame. You can also interact with
the SQL interface using the command-line or over JDBC/ODBC.

Datasets and DataFrames

A Dataset is a distributed collection of data. Dataset is a new interface added in Spark 1.6 that provides the benefits of
RDDs (strong typing, ability to use powerful lambda functions) with the benefits of Spark SQL’s optimized execution
engine. A Dataset can be constructed from JVM objects and then manipulated using functional transformations (map,
flatMap, filter, etc.). The Dataset API is available in Scala and Java. Python does not have the support for the
Dataset API. But due to Python’s dynamic nature, many of the benefits of the Dataset API are already available (i.e. you
can access the field of a row by name naturally row.columnName). The case for R is similar.

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A DataFrame is a Dataset organized into named columns. It is conceptually equivalent to a table in a relational database
or a data frame in R/Python, but with richer optimizations under the hood. DataFrames can be constructed from a wide
array of sources such as: structured data files, tables in Hive, external databases, or existing RDDs. The DataFrame API
is available in Scala, Java, Python, and R. In Scala and Java, a DataFrame is represented by a Dataset of Rows. In the
Scala API, DataFrame is simply a type alias of Dataset[Row]. While, in Java API, users need to use Dataset<Row> to
represent a DataFrame.

Throughout this document, we will often refer to Scala/Java Datasets of Rows as DataFrames.

Getting Started
Starting Point: SparkSession
Scala Java Python R

The entry point into all functionality in Spark is the SparkSession class. To create a basic SparkSession, just use
SparkSession.builder():

import org.apache.spark.sql.SparkSession

val spark = SparkSession

.builder()
.appName("Spark SQL basic example")
.config("spark.some.config.option", "some-value")
.getOrCreate()

// For implicit conversions like converting RDDs to DataFrames

import spark.implicits._

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

SparkSession in Spark 2.0 provides builtin support for Hive features including the ability to write queries using HiveQL,
access to Hive UDFs, and the ability to read data from Hive tables. To use these features, you do not need to have an
existing Hive setup.

Creating DataFrames
Scala Java Python R

With a SparkSession, applications can create DataFrames from an existing RDD, from a Hive table, or from Spark data
sources.

As an example, the following creates a DataFrame based on the content of a JSON file:

val df = spark.read.json("examples/src/main/resources/people.json")

// Displays the content of the DataFrame to stdout

df.show()
// +----+-------+
// | age| name|

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// +----+-------+
// |null|Michael|
// | 30| Andy|
// | 19| Justin|
// +----+-------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Untyped Dataset Operations (aka DataFrame Operations)

DataFrames provide a domain-specific language for structured data manipulation in Scala, Java, Python and R.

As mentioned above, in Spark 2.0, DataFrames are just Dataset of Rows in Scala and Java API. These operations are
also referred as “untyped transformations” in contrast to “typed transformations” come with strongly typed Scala/Java
Datasets.

Here we include some basic examples of structured data processing using Datasets:

Scala Java Python R

// This import is needed to use the $-notation

import spark.implicits._
// Print the schema in a tree format
df.printSchema()
// root
// |-- age: long (nullable = true)
// |-- name: string (nullable = true)

// Select only the "name" column

df.select("name").show()
// +-------+
// | name|
// +-------+
// |Michael|
// | Andy|
// | Justin|
// +-------+

// Select everybody, but increment the age by 1

df.select($"name", $"age" + 1).show()
// +-------+---------+
// | name|(age + 1)|
// +-------+---------+
// |Michael| null|
// | Andy| 31|
// | Justin| 20|
// +-------+---------+

// Select people older than 21

df.filter($"age" > 21).show()
// +---+----+
// |age|name|

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// +---+----+
// | 30|Andy|
// +---+----+

// Count people by age

df.groupBy("age").count().show()
// +----+-----+
// | age|count|
// +----+-----+
// | 19| 1|
// |null| 1|
// | 30| 1|
// +----+-----+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

For a complete list of the types of operations that can be performed on a Dataset refer to the API Documentation.

In addition to simple column references and expressions, Datasets also have a rich library of functions including string
manipulation, date arithmetic, common math operations and more. The complete list is available in the DataFrame
Function Reference.

Running SQL Queries Programmatically

Scala Java Python R

The sql function on a SparkSession enables applications to run SQL queries programmatically and returns the result as
a DataFrame.

// Register the DataFrame as a SQL temporary view

df.createOrReplaceTempView("people")

val sqlDF = spark.sql("SELECT * FROM people")

sqlDF.show()
// +----+-------+
// | age| name|
// +----+-------+
// |null|Michael|
// | 30| Andy|
// | 19| Justin|
// +----+-------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Global Temporary View

Temporary views in Spark SQL are session-scoped and will disappear if the session that creates it terminates. If you
want to have a temporary view that is shared among all sessions and keep alive until the Spark application terminates,
you can create a global temporary view. Global temporary view is tied to a system preserved database global_temp,
and we must use the qualified name to refer it, e.g. SELECT * FROM global_temp.view1.

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Scala Java Python Sql

// Register the DataFrame as a global temporary view

df.createGlobalTempView("people")

// Global temporary view is tied to a system preserved database `global_temp`

spark.sql("SELECT * FROM global_temp.people").show()
// +----+-------+
// | age| name|
// +----+-------+
// |null|Michael|
// | 30| Andy|
// | 19| Justin|
// +----+-------+

// Global temporary view is cross-session

spark.newSession().sql("SELECT * FROM global_temp.people").show()
// +----+-------+
// | age| name|
// +----+-------+
// |null|Michael|
// | 30| Andy|
// | 19| Justin|
// +----+-------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Creating Datasets
Datasets are similar to RDDs, however, instead of using Java serialization or Kryo they use a specialized Encoder to
serialize the objects for processing or transmitting over the network. While both encoders and standard serialization are
responsible for turning an object into bytes, encoders are code generated dynamically and use a format that allows
Spark to perform many operations like filtering, sorting and hashing without deserializing the bytes back into an object.

Scala Java

// Note: Case classes in Scala 2.10 can support only up to 22 fields. To work around this limit,
// you can use custom classes that implement the Product interface
case class Person(name: String, age: Long)

// Encoders are created for case classes

val caseClassDS = Seq(Person("Andy", 32)).toDS()
caseClassDS.show()
// +----+---+
// |name|age|
// +----+---+
// |Andy| 32|
// +----+---+

// Encoders for most common types are automatically provided by importing spark.implicits._
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val primitiveDS = Seq(1, 2, 3).toDS()
primitiveDS.map(_ + 1).collect() // Returns: Array(2, 3, 4)

// DataFrames can be converted to a Dataset by providing a class. Mapping will be done by name
val path = "examples/src/main/resources/people.json"
val peopleDS = spark.read.json(path).as[Person]
peopleDS.show()
// +----+-------+
// | age| name|
// +----+-------+
// |null|Michael|
// | 30| Andy|
// | 19| Justin|
// +----+-------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Interoperating with RDDs

Spark SQL supports two different methods for converting existing RDDs into Datasets. The first method uses reflection
to infer the schema of an RDD that contains specific types of objects. This reflection based approach leads to more
concise code and works well when you already know the schema while writing your Spark application.

The second method for creating Datasets is through a programmatic interface that allows you to construct a schema
and then apply it to an existing RDD. While this method is more verbose, it allows you to construct Datasets when the
columns and their types are not known until runtime.

Inferring the Schema Using Reflection

Scala Java Python

The Scala interface for Spark SQL supports automatically converting an RDD containing case classes to a DataFrame.
The case class defines the schema of the table. The names of the arguments to the case class are read using reflection
and become the names of the columns. Case classes can also be nested or contain complex types such as Seqs or
Arrays. This RDD can be implicitly converted to a DataFrame and then be registered as a table. Tables can be used in
subsequent SQL statements.

// For implicit conversions from RDDs to DataFrames

import spark.implicits._

// Create an RDD of Person objects from a text file, convert it to a Dataframe

val peopleDF = spark.sparkContext
.textFile("examples/src/main/resources/people.txt")
.map(_.split(","))
.map(attributes => Person(attributes(0), attributes(1).trim.toInt))
.toDF()
// Register the DataFrame as a temporary view
peopleDF.createOrReplaceTempView("people")

// SQL statements can be run by using the sql methods provided by Spark
val teenagersDF = spark.sql("SELECT name, age FROM people WHERE age BETWEEN 13 AND 19")

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// The columns of a row in the result can be accessed by field index

teenagersDF.map(teenager => "Name: " + teenager(0)).show()
// +------------+
// | value|
// +------------+
// |Name: Justin|
// +------------+

// or by field name
teenagersDF.map(teenager => "Name: " + teenager.getAs[String]("name")).show()
// +------------+
// | value|
// +------------+
// |Name: Justin|
// +------------+

// No pre-defined encoders for Dataset[Map[K,V]], define explicitly

implicit val mapEncoder = org.apache.spark.sql.Encoders.kryo[Map[String, Any]]
// Primitive types and case classes can be also defined as
// implicit val stringIntMapEncoder: Encoder[Map[String, Any]] = ExpressionEncoder()

// row.getValuesMap[T] retrieves multiple columns at once into a Map[String, T]

teenagersDF.map(teenager => teenager.getValuesMap[Any](List("name", "age"))).collect()
// Array(Map("name" -> "Justin", "age" -> 19))

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Programmatically Specifying the Schema

Scala Java Python

When case classes cannot be defined ahead of time (for example, the structure of records is encoded in a string, or a
text dataset will be parsed and fields will be projected differently for different users), a DataFrame can be created
programmatically with three steps.

1. Create an RDD of Rows from the original RDD;

2. Create the schema represented by a StructType matching the structure of Rows in the RDD created in Step 1.
3. Apply the schema to the RDD of Rows via createDataFrame method provided by SparkSession.

For example:

import org.apache.spark.sql.types._

// Create an RDD
val peopleRDD = spark.sparkContext.textFile("examples/src/main/resources/people.txt")

// The schema is encoded in a string

val schemaString = "name age"

// Generate the schema based on the string of schema

val fields = schemaString.split(" ")

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.map(fieldName => StructField(fieldName, StringType, nullable = true))
val schema = StructType(fields)

// Convert records of the RDD (people) to Rows

val rowRDD = peopleRDD
.map(_.split(","))
.map(attributes => Row(attributes(0), attributes(1).trim))

// Apply the schema to the RDD

val peopleDF = spark.createDataFrame(rowRDD, schema)

// Creates a temporary view using the DataFrame

peopleDF.createOrReplaceTempView("people")

// SQL can be run over a temporary view created using DataFrames

val results = spark.sql("SELECT name FROM people")

// The results of SQL queries are DataFrames and support all the normal RDD operations
// The columns of a row in the result can be accessed by field index or by field name
results.map(attributes => "Name: " + attributes(0)).show()
// +-------------+
// | value|
// +-------------+
// |Name: Michael|
// | Name: Andy|
// | Name: Justin|
// +-------------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Aggregations
The built-in DataFrames functions provide common aggregations such as count(), countDistinct(), avg(), max(),
min(), etc. While those functions are designed for DataFrames, Spark SQL also has type-safe versions for some of
them in Scala and Java to work with strongly typed Datasets. Moreover, users are not limited to the predefined
aggregate functions and can create their own.

Untyped User-Defined Aggregate Functions

Scala Java

Users have to extend the UserDefinedAggregateFunction abstract class to implement a custom untyped aggregate
function. For example, a user-defined average can look like:

import org.apache.spark.sql.expressions.MutableAggregationBuffer
import org.apache.spark.sql.expressions.UserDefinedAggregateFunction
import org.apache.spark.sql.types._
import org.apache.spark.sql.Row
import org.apache.spark.sql.SparkSession

object MyAverage extends UserDefinedAggregateFunction {

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// Data types of input arguments of this aggregate function
def inputSchema: StructType = StructType(StructField("inputColumn", LongType) :: Nil)
// Data types of values in the aggregation buffer
def bufferSchema: StructType = {
StructType(StructField("sum", LongType) :: StructField("count", LongType) :: Nil)
}
// The data type of the returned value
def dataType: DataType = DoubleType
// Whether this function always returns the same output on the identical input
def deterministic: Boolean = true
// Initializes the given aggregation buffer. The buffer itself is a `Row` that in addition to
// standard methods like retrieving a value at an index (e.g., get(), getBoolean()), provides
// the opportunity to update its values. Note that arrays and maps inside the buffer are still
// immutable.
def initialize(buffer: MutableAggregationBuffer): Unit = {
buffer(0) = 0L
buffer(1) = 0L
}
// Updates the given aggregation buffer `buffer` with new input data from `input`
def update(buffer: MutableAggregationBuffer, input: Row): Unit = {
if (!input.isNullAt(0)) {
buffer(0) = buffer.getLong(0) + input.getLong(0)
buffer(1) = buffer.getLong(1) + 1
}
}
// Merges two aggregation buffers and stores the updated buffer values back to `buffer1`
def merge(buffer1: MutableAggregationBuffer, buffer2: Row): Unit = {
buffer1(0) = buffer1.getLong(0) + buffer2.getLong(0)
buffer1(1) = buffer1.getLong(1) + buffer2.getLong(1)
}
// Calculates the final result
def evaluate(buffer: Row): Double = buffer.getLong(0).toDouble / buffer.getLong(1)
}

// Register the function to access it

spark.udf.register("myAverage", MyAverage)

val df = spark.read.json("examples/src/main/resources/employees.json")
df.createOrReplaceTempView("employees")
df.show()
// +-------+------+
// | name|salary|
// +-------+------+
// |Michael| 3000|
// | Andy| 4500|
// | Justin| 3500|
// | Berta| 4000|
// +-------+------+

val result = spark.sql("SELECT myAverage(salary) as average_salary FROM employees")

result.show()
// +--------------+
// |average_salary|
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// +--------------+
// | 3750.0|
// +--------------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/UserDefinedUntypedAggregation.scala" in the Spark

repo.

Type-Safe User-Defined Aggregate Functions

User-defined aggregations for strongly typed Datasets revolve around the Aggregator abstract class. For example, a
type-safe user-defined average can look like:

Scala Java

import org.apache.spark.sql.expressions.Aggregator
import org.apache.spark.sql.Encoder
import org.apache.spark.sql.Encoders
import org.apache.spark.sql.SparkSession

case class Employee(name: String, salary: Long)

case class Average(var sum: Long, var count: Long)

object MyAverage extends Aggregator[Employee, Average, Double] {

// A zero value for this aggregation. Should satisfy the property that any b + zero = b
def zero: Average = Average(0L, 0L)
// Combine two values to produce a new value. For performance, the function may modify `buffer`
// and return it instead of constructing a new object
def reduce(buffer: Average, employee: Employee): Average = {
buffer.sum += employee.salary
buffer.count += 1
buffer
}
// Merge two intermediate values
def merge(b1: Average, b2: Average): Average = {
b1.sum += b2.sum
b1.count += b2.count
b1
}
// Transform the output of the reduction
def finish(reduction: Average): Double = reduction.sum.toDouble / reduction.count
// Specifies the Encoder for the intermediate value type
def bufferEncoder: Encoder[Average] = Encoders.product
// Specifies the Encoder for the final output value type
def outputEncoder: Encoder[Double] = Encoders.scalaDouble
}

val ds = spark.read.json("examples/src/main/resources/employees.json").as[Employee]
ds.show()
// +-------+------+
// | name|salary|
// +-------+------+

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// |Michael| 3000|
// | Andy| 4500|
// | Justin| 3500|
// | Berta| 4000|
// +-------+------+

// Convert the function to a `TypedColumn` and give it a name

val averageSalary = MyAverage.toColumn.name("average_salary")
val result = ds.select(averageSalary)
result.show()
// +--------------+
// |average_salary|
// +--------------+
// | 3750.0|
// +--------------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/UserDefinedTypedAggregation.scala" in the Spark repo.

Data Sources
Spark SQL supports operating on a variety of data sources through the DataFrame interface. A DataFrame can be
operated on using relational transformations and can also be used to create a temporary view. Registering a DataFrame
as a temporary view allows you to run SQL queries over its data. This section describes the general methods for
loading and saving data using the Spark Data Sources and then goes into specific options that are available for the
built-in data sources.

Generic Load/Save Functions

In the simplest form, the default data source (parquet unless otherwise configured by spark.sql.sources.default) will
be used for all operations.

Scala Java Python R

val usersDF = spark.read.load("examples/src/main/resources/users.parquet")

usersDF.select("name", "favorite_color").write.save("namesAndFavColors.parquet")

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Manually Specifying Options

You can also manually specify the data source that will be used along with any extra options that you would like to pass
to the data source. Data sources are specified by their fully qualified name (i.e., org.apache.spark.sql.parquet), but
for built-in sources you can also use their short names (json, parquet, jdbc, orc, libsvm, csv, text). DataFrames
loaded from any data source type can be converted into other types using this syntax.

Scala Java Python R

val peopleDF = spark.read.format("json").load("examples/src/main/resources/people.json")

peopleDF.select("name", "age").write.format("parquet").save("namesAndAges.parquet")

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Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Run SQL on files directly

Instead of using read API to load a file into DataFrame and query it, you can also query that file directly with SQL.

Scala Java Python R

val sqlDF = spark.sql("SELECT * FROM parquet.`examples/src/main/resources/users.parquet`")

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Save Modes
Save operations can optionally take a SaveMode, that specifies how to handle existing data if present. It is important to
realize that these save modes do not utilize any locking and are not atomic. Additionally, when performing an
Overwrite, the data will be deleted before writing out the new data.

Scala/Java Any Meaning

Language

SaveMode.ErrorIfExists "error" When saving a DataFrame to a data source, if data already exists, an
(default) (default) exception is expected to be thrown.

SaveMode.Append "append" When saving a DataFrame to a data source, if data/table already exists,
contents of the DataFrame are expected to be appended to existing data.

SaveMode.Overwrite "overwrite" Overwrite mode means that when saving a DataFrame to a data source, if
data/table already exists, existing data is expected to be overwritten by
the contents of the DataFrame.

SaveMode.Ignore "ignore" Ignore mode means that when saving a DataFrame to a data source, if
data already exists, the save operation is expected to not save the
contents of the DataFrame and to not change the existing data. This is
similar to a CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS in SQL.

Saving to Persistent Tables

DataFrames can also be saved as persistent tables into Hive metastore using the saveAsTable command. Notice that an
existing Hive deployment is not necessary to use this feature. Spark will create a default local Hive metastore (using
Derby) for you. Unlike the createOrReplaceTempView command, saveAsTable will materialize the contents of the
DataFrame and create a pointer to the data in the Hive metastore. Persistent tables will still exist even after your Spark
program has restarted, as long as you maintain your connection to the same metastore. A DataFrame for a persistent
table can be created by calling the table method on a SparkSession with the name of the table.

For file-based data source, e.g. text, parquet, json, etc. you can specify a custom table path via the path option, e.g.
df.write.option("path", "/some/path").saveAsTable("t"). When the table is dropped, the custom table path will
not be removed and the table data is still there. If no custom table path is specified, Spark will write data to a default
table path under the warehouse directory. When the table is dropped, the default table path will be removed too.

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Starting from Spark 2.1, persistent datasource tables have per-partition metadata stored in the Hive metastore. This
brings several benefits:

Since the metastore can return only necessary partitions for a query, discovering all the partitions on the first query
to the table is no longer needed.
Hive DDLs such as ALTER TABLE PARTITION ... SET LOCATION are now available for tables created with the
Datasource API.

Note that partition information is not gathered by default when creating external datasource tables (those with a path
option). To sync the partition information in the metastore, you can invoke MSCK REPAIR TABLE.

Bucketing, Sorting and Partitioning

For file-based data source, it is also possible to bucket and sort or partition the output. Bucketing and sorting are
applicable only to persistent tables:

Scala Java Python Sql

peopleDF.write.bucketBy(42, "name").sortBy("age").saveAsTable("people_bucketed")

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

while partitioning can be used with both save and saveAsTable when using the Dataset APIs.

Scala Java Python Sql

usersDF.write.partitionBy("favorite_color").format("parquet").save("namesPartByColor.parquet")

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

It is possible to use both partitioning and bucketing for a single table:

Scala Java Python Sql

peopleDF
.write
.partitionBy("favorite_color")
.bucketBy(42, "name")
.saveAsTable("people_partitioned_bucketed")

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

partitionBy creates a directory structure as described in the Partition Discovery section. Thus, it has limited
applicability to columns with high cardinality. In contrast bucketBy distributes data across a fixed number of buckets
and can be used when a number of unique values is unbounded.

Parquet Files
Parquet is a columnar format that is supported by many other data processing systems. Spark SQL provides support
for both reading and writing Parquet files that automatically preserves the schema of the original data. When writing
Parquet files, all columns are automatically converted to be nullable for compatibility reasons.

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Loading Data Programmatically

Using the data from the above example:

Scala Java Python R Sql

// Encoders for most common types are automatically provided by importing spark.implicits._
import spark.implicits._

val peopleDF = spark.read.json("examples/src/main/resources/people.json")

// DataFrames can be saved as Parquet files, maintaining the schema information

peopleDF.write.parquet("people.parquet")

// Read in the parquet file created above

// Parquet files are self-describing so the schema is preserved
// The result of loading a Parquet file is also a DataFrame
val parquetFileDF = spark.read.parquet("people.parquet")

// Parquet files can also be used to create a temporary view and then used in SQL statements
parquetFileDF.createOrReplaceTempView("parquetFile")
val namesDF = spark.sql("SELECT name FROM parquetFile WHERE age BETWEEN 13 AND 19")
namesDF.map(attributes => "Name: " + attributes(0)).show()
// +------------+
// | value|
// +------------+
// |Name: Justin|
// +------------+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Partition Discovery
Table partitioning is a common optimization approach used in systems like Hive. In a partitioned table, data are usually
stored in different directories, with partitioning column values encoded in the path of each partition directory. The
Parquet data source is now able to discover and infer partitioning information automatically. For example, we can store
all our previously used population data into a partitioned table using the following directory structure, with two extra
columns, gender and country as partitioning columns:

path
└── to
└── table
├── gender=male
│   ├── ...
│   │
│   ├── country=US
│   │   └── data.parquet
│   ├── country=CN
│   │   └── data.parquet
│   └── ...

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└── gender=female
   ├── ...
   │
   ├── country=US
   │   └── data.parquet
   ├── country=CN
   │   └── data.parquet
   └── ...

By passing path/to/table to either SparkSession.read.parquet or SparkSession.read.load, Spark SQL will

automatically extract the partitioning information from the paths. Now the schema of the returned DataFrame becomes:

root
|-- name: string (nullable = true)
|-- age: long (nullable = true)
|-- gender: string (nullable = true)
|-- country: string (nullable = true)

Notice that the data types of the partitioning columns are automatically inferred. Currently, numeric data types and
string type are supported. Sometimes users may not want to automatically infer the data types of the partitioning
columns. For these use cases, the automatic type inference can be configured by
spark.sql.sources.partitionColumnTypeInference.enabled, which is default to true. When type inference is
disabled, string type will be used for the partitioning columns.

Starting from Spark 1.6.0, partition discovery only finds partitions under the given paths by default. For the above
example, if users pass path/to/table/gender=male to either SparkSession.read.parquet or SparkSession.read.load,
gender will not be considered as a partitioning column. If users need to specify the base path that partition discovery
should start with, they can set basePath in the data source options. For example, when path/to/table/gender=male is
the path of the data and users set basePath to path/to/table/, gender will be a partitioning column.

Schema Merging
Like ProtocolBuffer, Avro, and Thrift, Parquet also supports schema evolution. Users can start with a simple schema,
and gradually add more columns to the schema as needed. In this way, users may end up with multiple Parquet files
with different but mutually compatible schemas. The Parquet data source is now able to automatically detect this case
and merge schemas of all these files.

Since schema merging is a relatively expensive operation, and is not a necessity in most cases, we turned it off by
default starting from 1.5.0. You may enable it by

1. setting data source option mergeSchema to true when reading Parquet files (as shown in the examples below), or
2. setting the global SQL option spark.sql.parquet.mergeSchema to true.

Scala Java Python R

// This is used to implicitly convert an RDD to a DataFrame.

import spark.implicits._

// Create a simple DataFrame, store into a partition directory

val squaresDF = spark.sparkContext.makeRDD(1 to 5).map(i => (i, i * i)).toDF("value", "square")
squaresDF.write.parquet("data/test_table/key=1")

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// Create another DataFrame in a new partition directory,

// adding a new column and dropping an existing column
val cubesDF = spark.sparkContext.makeRDD(6 to 10).map(i => (i, i * i * i)).toDF("value", "cube")
cubesDF.write.parquet("data/test_table/key=2")

// Read the partitioned table

val mergedDF = spark.read.option("mergeSchema", "true").parquet("data/test_table")
mergedDF.printSchema()

// The final schema consists of all 3 columns in the Parquet files together
// with the partitioning column appeared in the partition directory paths
// root
// |-- value: int (nullable = true)
// |-- square: int (nullable = true)
// |-- cube: int (nullable = true)
// |-- key: int (nullable = true)

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Hive metastore Parquet table conversion

When reading from and writing to Hive metastore Parquet tables, Spark SQL will try to use its own Parquet support
instead of Hive SerDe for better performance. This behavior is controlled by the
spark.sql.hive.convertMetastoreParquet configuration, and is turned on by default.

Hive/Parquet Schema Reconciliation

There are two key differences between Hive and Parquet from the perspective of table schema processing.

1. Hive is case insensitive, while Parquet is not

2. Hive considers all columns nullable, while nullability in Parquet is significant

Due to this reason, we must reconcile Hive metastore schema with Parquet schema when converting a Hive metastore
Parquet table to a Spark SQL Parquet table. The reconciliation rules are:

1. Fields that have the same name in both schema must have the same data type regardless of nullability. The
reconciled field should have the data type of the Parquet side, so that nullability is respected.

2. The reconciled schema contains exactly those fields defined in Hive metastore schema.

Any fields that only appear in the Parquet schema are dropped in the reconciled schema.
Any fields that only appear in the Hive metastore schema are added as nullable field in the reconciled schema.

Metadata Refreshing
Spark SQL caches Parquet metadata for better performance. When Hive metastore Parquet table conversion is
enabled, metadata of those converted tables are also cached. If these tables are updated by Hive or other external
tools, you need to refresh them manually to ensure consistent metadata.

Scala Java Python Sql

// spark is an existing SparkSession

spark.catalog.refreshTable("my_table")

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Configuration
Configuration of Parquet can be done using the setConf method on SparkSession or by running SET key=value
commands using SQL.

Property Name Default Meaning

spark.sql.parquet.binaryAsString false Some other Parquet-producing systems, in particular

Impala, Hive, and older versions of Spark SQL, do not
differentiate between binary data and strings when writing
out the Parquet schema. This flag tells Spark SQL to
interpret binary data as a string to provide compatibility with
these systems.

spark.sql.parquet.int96AsTimestamp true Some Parquet-producing systems, in particular Impala and

Hive, store Timestamp into INT96. This flag tells Spark SQL
to interpret INT96 data as a timestamp to provide
compatibility with these systems.

spark.sql.parquet.cacheMetadata true Turns on caching of Parquet schema metadata. Can speed

up querying of static data.

spark.sql.parquet.compression.codec snappy Sets the compression codec use when writing Parquet files.
Acceptable values include: uncompressed, snappy, gzip,
lzo.

spark.sql.parquet.filterPushdown true Enables Parquet filter push-down optimization when set to

true.

spark.sql.hive.convertMetastoreParquet true When set to false, Spark SQL will use the Hive SerDe for
parquet tables instead of the built in support.

spark.sql.parquet.mergeSchema false When true, the Parquet data source merges schemas
collected from all data files, otherwise the schema is picked
from the summary file or a random data file if no summary
file is available.

spark.sql.optimizer.metadataOnly true When true, enable the metadata-only query optimization

that use the table's metadata to produce the partition
columns instead of table scans. It applies when all the
columns scanned are partition columns and the query has
an aggregate operator that satisfies distinct semantics.

JSON Datasets
Scala Java Python R Sql

Spark SQL can automatically infer the schema of a JSON dataset and load it as a Dataset[Row]. This conversion can
be done using SparkSession.read.json() on either a Dataset[String], or a JSON file.

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Note that the file that is offered as a json file is not a typical JSON file. Each line must contain a separate, self-contained
valid JSON object. For more information, please see JSON Lines text format, also called newline-delimited JSON.

For a regular multi-line JSON file, set the multiLine option to true.

// Primitive types (Int, String, etc) and Product types (case classes) encoders are
// supported by importing this when creating a Dataset.
import spark.implicits._

// A JSON dataset is pointed to by path.

// The path can be either a single text file or a directory storing text files
val path = "examples/src/main/resources/people.json"
val peopleDF = spark.read.json(path)

// The inferred schema can be visualized using the printSchema() method

peopleDF.printSchema()
// root
// |-- age: long (nullable = true)
// |-- name: string (nullable = true)

// Creates a temporary view using the DataFrame

peopleDF.createOrReplaceTempView("people")

// SQL statements can be run by using the sql methods provided by spark
val teenagerNamesDF = spark.sql("SELECT name FROM people WHERE age BETWEEN 13 AND 19")
teenagerNamesDF.show()
// +------+
// | name|
// +------+
// |Justin|
// +------+

// Alternatively, a DataFrame can be created for a JSON dataset represented by

// a Dataset[String] storing one JSON object per string
val otherPeopleDataset = spark.createDataset(
"""{"name":"Yin","address":{"city":"Columbus","state":"Ohio"}}""" :: Nil)
val otherPeople = spark.read.json(otherPeopleDataset)
otherPeople.show()
// +---------------+----+
// | address|name|
// +---------------+----+
// |[Columbus,Ohio]| Yin|
// +---------------+----+

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Hive Tables
Spark SQL also supports reading and writing data stored in Apache Hive. However, since Hive has a large number of
dependencies, these dependencies are not included in the default Spark distribution. If Hive dependencies can be
found on the classpath, Spark will load them automatically. Note that these Hive dependencies must also be present on

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all of the worker nodes, as they will need access to the Hive serialization and deserialization libraries (SerDes) in order
to access data stored in Hive.

Configuration of Hive is done by placing your hive-site.xml, core-site.xml (for security configuration), and hdfs-
site.xml (for HDFS configuration) file in conf/.

When working with Hive, one must instantiate SparkSession with Hive support, including connectivity to a persistent
Hive metastore, support for Hive serdes, and Hive user-defined functions. Users who do not have an existing Hive
deployment can still enable Hive support. When not configured by the hive-site.xml, the context automatically
creates metastore_db in the current directory and creates a directory configured by spark.sql.warehouse.dir, which
defaults to the directory spark-warehouse in the current directory that the Spark application is started. Note that the
hive.metastore.warehouse.dir property in hive-site.xml is deprecated since Spark 2.0.0. Instead, use
spark.sql.warehouse.dir to specify the default location of database in warehouse. You may need to grant write
privilege to the user who starts the Spark application.

Scala Java Python R

import java.io.File

import org.apache.spark.sql.Row
import org.apache.spark.sql.SparkSession

case class Record(key: Int, value: String)

// warehouseLocation points to the default location for managed databases and tables
val warehouseLocation = new File("spark-warehouse").getAbsolutePath

val spark = SparkSession

.builder()
.appName("Spark Hive Example")
.config("spark.sql.warehouse.dir", warehouseLocation)
.enableHiveSupport()
.getOrCreate()

import spark.implicits._
import spark.sql

sql("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS src (key INT, value STRING) USING hive")
sql("LOAD DATA LOCAL INPATH 'examples/src/main/resources/kv1.txt' INTO TABLE src")

// Queries are expressed in HiveQL

sql("SELECT * FROM src").show()
// +---+-------+
// |key| value|
// +---+-------+
// |238|val_238|
// | 86| val_86|
// |311|val_311|
// ...

// Aggregation queries are also supported.

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sql("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM src").show()
// +--------+
// |count(1)|
// +--------+
// | 500 |
// +--------+

// The results of SQL queries are themselves DataFrames and support all normal functions.
val sqlDF = sql("SELECT key, value FROM src WHERE key < 10 ORDER BY key")

// The items in DataFrames are of type Row, which allows you to access each column by ordinal.
val stringsDS = sqlDF.map {
case Row(key: Int, value: String) => s"Key: $key, Value: $value"
}
stringsDS.show()
// +--------------------+
// | value|
// +--------------------+
// |Key: 0, Value: val_0|
// |Key: 0, Value: val_0|
// |Key: 0, Value: val_0|
// ...

// You can also use DataFrames to create temporary views within a SparkSession.
val recordsDF = spark.createDataFrame((1 to 100).map(i => Record(i, s"val_$i")))
recordsDF.createOrReplaceTempView("records")

// Queries can then join DataFrame data with data stored in Hive.
sql("SELECT * FROM records r JOIN src s ON r.key = s.key").show()
// +---+------+---+------+
// |key| value|key| value|
// +---+------+---+------+
// | 2| val_2| 2| val_2|
// | 4| val_4| 4| val_4|
// | 5| val_5| 5| val_5|
// ...

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/hive/SparkHiveExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Specifying storage format for Hive tables

When you create a Hive table, you need to define how this table should read/write data from/to file system, i.e. the
“input format” and “output format”. You also need to define how this table should deserialize the data to rows, or
serialize rows to data, i.e. the “serde”. The following options can be used to specify the storage format(“serde”, “input
format”, “output format”), e.g. CREATE TABLE src(id int) USING hive OPTIONS(fileFormat 'parquet'). By default,
we will read the table files as plain text. Note that, Hive storage handler is not supported yet when creating table, you
can create a table using storage handler at Hive side, and use Spark SQL to read it.

Property Name Meaning

fileFormat A fileFormat is kind of a package of storage format specifications, including "serde", "input
format" and "output format". Currently we support 6 fileFormats: 'sequencefile', 'rcfile', 'orc',

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'parquet', 'textfile' and 'avro'.

inputFormat, These 2 options specify the name of a corresponding `InputFormat` and `OutputFormat` class
outputFormat as a string literal, e.g. `org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.orc.OrcInputFormat`. These 2 options
must be appeared in pair, and you can not specify them if you already specified the
`fileFormat` option.

serde This option specifies the name of a serde class. When the `fileFormat` option is specified, do
not specify this option if the given `fileFormat` already include the information of serde.
Currently "sequencefile", "textfile" and "rcfile" don't include the serde information and you
can use this option with these 3 fileFormats.

fieldDelim, These options can only be used with "textfile" fileFormat. They define how to read delimited
escapeDelim, files into rows.
collectionDelim,
mapkeyDelim,
lineDelim

All other properties defined with OPTIONS will be regarded as Hive serde properties.

Interacting with Different Versions of Hive Metastore

One of the most important pieces of Spark SQL’s Hive support is interaction with Hive metastore, which enables Spark
SQL to access metadata of Hive tables. Starting from Spark 1.4.0, a single binary build of Spark SQL can be used to
query different versions of Hive metastores, using the configuration described below. Note that independent of the
version of Hive that is being used to talk to the metastore, internally Spark SQL will compile against Hive 1.2.1 and use
those classes for internal execution (serdes, UDFs, UDAFs, etc).

The following options can be used to configure the version of Hive that is used to retrieve metadata:

Property Name Default Meaning

spark.sql.hive.metastore.version 1.2.1 Version of the Hive metastore. Available

options are 0.12.0 through 1.2.1.

spark.sql.hive.metastore.jars builtin Location of the jars that should be used

to instantiate the HiveMetastoreClient.
This property can be one of three
options:
1. builtin
Use Hive 1.2.1, which is bundled
with the Spark assembly when -
Phive is enabled. When this option is
chosen,
spark.sql.hive.metastore.version
must be either 1.2.1 or not defined.
2. maven
Use Hive jars of specified version
downloaded from Maven
repositories. This configuration is not
generally recommended for
production deployments.

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3. A classpath in the standard format

for the JVM. This classpath must
include all of Hive and its
dependencies, including the correct
version of Hadoop. These jars only
need to be present on the driver, but
if you are running in yarn cluster
mode then you must ensure they are
packaged with your application.

spark.sql.hive.metastore.sharedPrefixes com.mysql.jdbc, A comma separated list of class prefixes

org.postgresql, that should be loaded using the
com.microsoft.sqlserver, classloader that is shared between
oracle.jdbc Spark SQL and a specific version of
Hive. An example of classes that should
be shared is JDBC drivers that are
needed to talk to the metastore. Other
classes that need to be shared are those
that interact with classes that are already
shared. For example, custom appenders
that are used by log4j.

spark.sql.hive.metastore.barrierPrefixes (empty) A comma separated list of class prefixes

that should explicitly be reloaded for
each version of Hive that Spark SQL is
communicating with. For example, Hive
UDFs that are declared in a prefix that
typically would be shared (i.e.
org.apache.spark.*).

JDBC To Other Databases

Spark SQL also includes a data source that can read data from other databases using JDBC. This functionality should
be preferred over using JdbcRDD. This is because the results are returned as a DataFrame and they can easily be
processed in Spark SQL or joined with other data sources. The JDBC data source is also easier to use from Java or
Python as it does not require the user to provide a ClassTag. (Note that this is different than the Spark SQL JDBC
server, which allows other applications to run queries using Spark SQL).

To get started you will need to include the JDBC driver for you particular database on the spark classpath. For example,
to connect to postgres from the Spark Shell you would run the following command:

bin/spark-shell --driver-class-path postgresql-9.4.1207.jar --jars postgresql-9.4.1207.jar

Tables from the remote database can be loaded as a DataFrame or Spark SQL temporary view using the Data Sources
API. Users can specify the JDBC connection properties in the data source options. user and password are normally
provided as connection properties for logging into the data sources. In addition to the connection properties, Spark
also supports the following case-insensitive options:

Property Name Meaning

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url The JDBC URL to connect to. The source-specific connection properties may be
specified in the URL. e.g., jdbc:postgresql://localhost/test?
user=fred&password=secret

dbtable The JDBC table that should be read. Note that anything that is valid in a FROM clause of a
SQL query can be used. For example, instead of a full table you could also use a
subquery in parentheses.

driver The class name of the JDBC driver to use to connect to this URL.

partitionColumn, These options must all be specified if any of them is specified. In addition,
lowerBound, upperBound numPartitions must be specified. They describe how to partition the table when reading
in parallel from multiple workers. partitionColumn must be a numeric column from the
table in question. Notice that lowerBound and upperBound are just used to decide the
partition stride, not for filtering the rows in table. So all rows in the table will be
partitioned and returned. This option applies only to reading.

numPartitions The maximum number of partitions that can be used for parallelism in table reading and
writing. This also determines the maximum number of concurrent JDBC connections. If
the number of partitions to write exceeds this limit, we decrease it to this limit by calling
coalesce(numPartitions) before writing.

fetchsize The JDBC fetch size, which determines how many rows to fetch per round trip. This can
help performance on JDBC drivers which default to low fetch size (eg. Oracle with 10
rows). This option applies only to reading.

batchsize The JDBC batch size, which determines how many rows to insert per round trip. This can
help performance on JDBC drivers. This option applies only to writing. It defaults to
1000.

isolationLevel The transaction isolation level, which applies to current connection. It can be one of
NONE, READ_COMMITTED, READ_UNCOMMITTED, REPEATABLE_READ, or SERIALIZABLE,
corresponding to standard transaction isolation levels defined by JDBC's Connection
object, with default of READ_UNCOMMITTED. This option applies only to writing. Please refer
the documentation in java.sql.Connection.

truncate This is a JDBC writer related option. When SaveMode.Overwrite is enabled, this option
causes Spark to truncate an existing table instead of dropping and recreating it. This can
be more efficient, and prevents the table metadata (e.g., indices) from being removed.
However, it will not work in some cases, such as when the new data has a different
schema. It defaults to false. This option applies only to writing.

createTableOptions This is a JDBC writer related option. If specified, this option allows setting of database-
specific table and partition options when creating a table (e.g., CREATE TABLE t (name
string) ENGINE=InnoDB.). This option applies only to writing.

createTableColumnTypes The database column data types to use instead of the defaults, when creating the table.
Data type information should be specified in the same format as CREATE TABLE
columns syntax (e.g: "name CHAR(64), comments VARCHAR(1024)"). The specified types
should be valid spark sql data types. This option applies only to writing.

Scala Java Python R Sql

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// Note: JDBC loading and saving can be achieved via either the load/save or jdbc methods
// Loading data from a JDBC source
val jdbcDF = spark.read
.format("jdbc")
.option("url", "jdbc:postgresql:dbserver")
.option("dbtable", "schema.tablename")
.option("user", "username")
.option("password", "password")
.load()

val connectionProperties = new Properties()

connectionProperties.put("user", "username")
connectionProperties.put("password", "password")
val jdbcDF2 = spark.read
.jdbc("jdbc:postgresql:dbserver", "schema.tablename", connectionProperties)

// Saving data to a JDBC source

jdbcDF.write
.format("jdbc")
.option("url", "jdbc:postgresql:dbserver")
.option("dbtable", "schema.tablename")
.option("user", "username")
.option("password", "password")
.save()

jdbcDF2.write
.jdbc("jdbc:postgresql:dbserver", "schema.tablename", connectionProperties)

// Specifying create table column data types on write

jdbcDF.write
.option("createTableColumnTypes", "name CHAR(64), comments VARCHAR(1024)")
.jdbc("jdbc:postgresql:dbserver", "schema.tablename", connectionProperties)

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SQLDataSourceExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Troubleshooting
The JDBC driver class must be visible to the primordial class loader on the client session and on all executors. This
is because Java’s DriverManager class does a security check that results in it ignoring all drivers not visible to the
primordial class loader when one goes to open a connection. One convenient way to do this is to modify
compute_classpath.sh on all worker nodes to include your driver JARs.
Some databases, such as H2, convert all names to upper case. You’ll need to use upper case to refer to those
names in Spark SQL.

Performance Tuning
For some workloads it is possible to improve performance by either caching data in memory, or by turning on some
experimental options.

Caching Data In Memory

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Spark SQL can cache tables using an in-memory columnar format by calling spark.catalog.cacheTable("tableName")
or dataFrame.cache(). Then Spark SQL will scan only required columns and will automatically tune compression to
minimize memory usage and GC pressure. You can call spark.catalog.uncacheTable("tableName") to remove the
table from memory.

Configuration of in-memory caching can be done using the setConf method on SparkSession or by running SET
key=value commands using SQL.

Property Name Default Meaning

spark.sql.inMemoryColumnarStorage.compressed true When set to true Spark SQL will automatically select
a compression codec for each column based on
statistics of the data.

spark.sql.inMemoryColumnarStorage.batchSize 10000 Controls the size of batches for columnar caching.

Larger batch sizes can improve memory utilization
and compression, but risk OOMs when caching data.

Other Configuration Options

The following options can also be used to tune the performance of query execution. It is possible that these options will
be deprecated in future release as more optimizations are performed automatically.

Property Name Default Meaning

spark.sql.files.maxPartitionBytes 134217728 The maximum number of bytes to pack into a single

(128 MB) partition when reading files.

spark.sql.files.openCostInBytes 4194304 (4 The estimated cost to open a file, measured by the

MB) number of bytes could be scanned in the same time. This
is used when putting multiple files into a partition. It is
better to over estimated, then the partitions with small files
will be faster than partitions with bigger files (which is
scheduled first).

spark.sql.broadcastTimeout 300 Timeout in seconds for the broadcast wait time in

broadcast joins

spark.sql.autoBroadcastJoinThreshold 10485760 Configures the maximum size in bytes for a table that will
(10 MB) be broadcast to all worker nodes when performing a join.
By setting this value to -1 broadcasting can be disabled.
Note that currently statistics are only supported for Hive
Metastore tables where the command ANALYZE TABLE
<tableName> COMPUTE STATISTICS noscan has been run.

spark.sql.shuffle.partitions 200 Configures the number of partitions to use when shuffling

data for joins or aggregations.

Distributed SQL Engine

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Spark SQL can also act as a distributed query engine using its JDBC/ODBC or command-line interface. In this mode,
end-users or applications can interact with Spark SQL directly to run SQL queries, without the need to write any code.

Running the Thrift JDBC/ODBC server

The Thrift JDBC/ODBC server implemented here corresponds to the HiveServer2 in Hive 1.2.1 You can test the JDBC
server with the beeline script that comes with either Spark or Hive 1.2.1.

To start the JDBC/ODBC server, run the following in the Spark directory:

./sbin/start-thriftserver.sh

This script accepts all bin/spark-submit command line options, plus a --hiveconf option to specify Hive properties.
You may run ./sbin/start-thriftserver.sh --help for a complete list of all available options. By default, the server
listens on localhost:10000. You may override this behaviour via either environment variables, i.e.:

export HIVE_SERVER2_THRIFT_PORT=<listening-port>
export HIVE_SERVER2_THRIFT_BIND_HOST=<listening-host>
./sbin/start-thriftserver.sh \
--master <master-uri> \
...

or system properties:

./sbin/start-thriftserver.sh \
--hiveconf hive.server2.thrift.port=<listening-port> \
--hiveconf hive.server2.thrift.bind.host=<listening-host> \
--master <master-uri>
...

Now you can use beeline to test the Thrift JDBC/ODBC server:

./bin/beeline

Connect to the JDBC/ODBC server in beeline with:

beeline> !connect jdbc:hive2://localhost:10000

Beeline will ask you for a username and password. In non-secure mode, simply enter the username on your machine
and a blank password. For secure mode, please follow the instructions given in the beeline documentation.

Configuration of Hive is done by placing your hive-site.xml, core-site.xml and hdfs-site.xml files in conf/.

You may also use the beeline script that comes with Hive.

Thrift JDBC server also supports sending thrift RPC messages over HTTP transport. Use the following setting to enable
HTTP mode as system property or in hive-site.xml file in conf/:

hive.server2.transport.mode - Set this to value: http

hive.server2.thrift.http.port - HTTP port number to listen on; default is 10001
hive.server2.http.endpoint - HTTP endpoint; default is cliservice

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To test, use beeline to connect to the JDBC/ODBC server in http mode with:

beeline> !connect jdbc:hive2://<host>:<port>/<database>?hive.server2.transport.mode=http;hive.server

2.thrift.http.path=<http_endpoint>

Running the Spark SQL CLI

The Spark SQL CLI is a convenient tool to run the Hive metastore service in local mode and execute queries input from
the command line. Note that the Spark SQL CLI cannot talk to the Thrift JDBC server.

To start the Spark SQL CLI, run the following in the Spark directory:

./bin/spark-sql

Configuration of Hive is done by placing your hive-site.xml, core-site.xml and hdfs-site.xml files in conf/. You
may run ./bin/spark-sql --help for a complete list of all available options.

Migration Guide
Upgrading From Spark SQL 2.1 to 2.2
Spark 2.1.1 introduced a new configuration key: spark.sql.hive.caseSensitiveInferenceMode. It had a default
setting of NEVER_INFER, which kept behavior identical to 2.1.0. However, Spark 2.2.0 changes this setting’s default
value to INFER_AND_SAVE to restore compatibility with reading Hive metastore tables whose underlying file schema
have mixed-case column names. With the INFER_AND_SAVE configuration value, on first access Spark will perform
schema inference on any Hive metastore table for which it has not already saved an inferred schema. Note that
schema inference can be a very time consuming operation for tables with thousands of partitions. If compatibility
with mixed-case column names is not a concern, you can safely set
spark.sql.hive.caseSensitiveInferenceMode to NEVER_INFER to avoid the initial overhead of schema inference.
Note that with the new default INFER_AND_SAVE setting, the results of the schema inference are saved as a
metastore key for future use. Therefore, the initial schema inference occurs only at a table’s first access.

Upgrading From Spark SQL 2.0 to 2.1

Datasource tables now store partition metadata in the Hive metastore. This means that Hive DDLs such as ALTER
TABLE PARTITION ... SET LOCATION are now available for tables created with the Datasource API.
Legacy datasource tables can be migrated to this format via the MSCK REPAIR TABLE command. Migrating
legacy tables is recommended to take advantage of Hive DDL support and improved planning performance.
To determine if a table has been migrated, look for the PartitionProvider: Catalog attribute when issuing
DESCRIBE FORMATTED on the table.
Changes to INSERT OVERWRITE TABLE ... PARTITION ... behavior for Datasource tables.
In prior Spark versions INSERT OVERWRITE overwrote the entire Datasource table, even when given a partition
specification. Now only partitions matching the specification are overwritten.
Note that this still differs from the behavior of Hive tables, which is to overwrite only partitions overlapping with
newly inserted data.

Upgrading From Spark SQL 1.6 to 2.0

SparkSession is now the new entry point of Spark that replaces the old SQLContext and HiveContext. Note that the
old SQLContext and HiveContext are kept for backward compatibility. A new catalog interface is accessible from
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SparkSession - existing API on databases and tables access such as listTables, createExternalTable,
dropTempView, cacheTable are moved here.

Dataset API and DataFrame API are unified. In Scala, DataFrame becomes a type alias for Dataset[Row], while Java
API users must replace DataFrame with Dataset<Row>. Both the typed transformations (e.g., map, filter, and
groupByKey) and untyped transformations (e.g., select and groupBy) are available on the Dataset class. Since
compile-time type-safety in Python and R is not a language feature, the concept of Dataset does not apply to these
languages’ APIs. Instead, DataFrame remains the primary programing abstraction, which is analogous to the single-
node data frame notion in these languages.

Dataset and DataFrame API unionAll has been deprecated and replaced by union
Dataset and DataFrame API explode has been deprecated, alternatively, use functions.explode() with select or
flatMap
Dataset and DataFrame API registerTempTable has been deprecated and replaced by createOrReplaceTempView

Changes to CREATE TABLE ... LOCATION behavior for Hive tables.

From Spark 2.0, CREATE TABLE ... LOCATION is equivalent to CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE ... LOCATION in order
to prevent accidental dropping the existing data in the user-provided locations. That means, a Hive table
created in Spark SQL with the user-specified location is always a Hive external table. Dropping external tables
will not remove the data. Users are not allowed to specify the location for Hive managed tables. Note that this is
different from the Hive behavior.
As a result, DROP TABLE statements on those tables will not remove the data.

Upgrading From Spark SQL 1.5 to 1.6

From Spark 1.6, by default the Thrift server runs in multi-session mode. Which means each JDBC/ODBC
connection owns a copy of their own SQL configuration and temporary function registry. Cached tables are still
shared though. If you prefer to run the Thrift server in the old single-session mode, please set option
spark.sql.hive.thriftServer.singleSession to true. You may either add this option to spark-defaults.conf, or
pass it to start-thriftserver.sh via --conf:

./sbin/start-thriftserver.sh \
--conf spark.sql.hive.thriftServer.singleSession=true \
...

Since 1.6.1, withColumn method in sparkR supports adding a new column to or replacing existing columns of the
same name of a DataFrame.

From Spark 1.6, LongType casts to TimestampType expect seconds instead of microseconds. This change was
made to match the behavior of Hive 1.2 for more consistent type casting to TimestampType from numeric types.
See SPARK-11724 for details.

Upgrading From Spark SQL 1.4 to 1.5

Optimized execution using manually managed memory (Tungsten) is now enabled by default, along with code
generation for expression evaluation. These features can both be disabled by setting spark.sql.tungsten.enabled
to false.
Parquet schema merging is no longer enabled by default. It can be re-enabled by setting
spark.sql.parquet.mergeSchema to true.
Resolution of strings to columns in python now supports using dots (.) to qualify the column or access nested
values. For example df['table.column.nestedField']. However, this means that if your column name contains
any dots you must now escape them using backticks (e.g., table.`column.with.dots`.nested).

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In-memory columnar storage partition pruning is on by default. It can be disabled by setting

spark.sql.inMemoryColumnarStorage.partitionPruning to false.
Unlimited precision decimal columns are no longer supported, instead Spark SQL enforces a maximum precision of
38. When inferring schema from BigDecimal objects, a precision of (38, 18) is now used. When no precision is
specified in DDL then the default remains Decimal(10, 0).
Timestamps are now stored at a precision of 1us, rather than 1ns
In the sql dialect, floating point numbers are now parsed as decimal. HiveQL parsing remains unchanged.
The canonical name of SQL/DataFrame functions are now lower case (e.g., sum vs SUM).
JSON data source will not automatically load new files that are created by other applications (i.e. files that are not
inserted to the dataset through Spark SQL). For a JSON persistent table (i.e. the metadata of the table is stored in
Hive Metastore), users can use REFRESH TABLE SQL command or HiveContext’s refreshTable method to include
those new files to the table. For a DataFrame representing a JSON dataset, users need to recreate the DataFrame
and the new DataFrame will include new files.
DataFrame.withColumn method in pySpark supports adding a new column or replacing existing columns of the
same name.

Upgrading from Spark SQL 1.3 to 1.4

DataFrame data reader/writer interface
Based on user feedback, we created a new, more fluid API for reading data in (SQLContext.read) and writing data out
(DataFrame.write), and deprecated the old APIs (e.g., SQLContext.parquetFile, SQLContext.jsonFile).

See the API docs for SQLContext.read ( Scala, Java, Python ) and DataFrame.write ( Scala, Java, Python ) more
information.

DataFrame.groupBy retains grouping columns

Based on user feedback, we changed the default behavior of DataFrame.groupBy().agg() to retain the grouping
columns in the resulting DataFrame. To keep the behavior in 1.3, set spark.sql.retainGroupColumns to false.

Scala Java Python

// In 1.3.x, in order for the grouping column "department" to show up,

// it must be included explicitly as part of the agg function call.
df.groupBy("department").agg($"department", max("age"), sum("expense"))

// In 1.4+, grouping column "department" is included automatically.

df.groupBy("department").agg(max("age"), sum("expense"))

// Revert to 1.3 behavior (not retaining grouping column) by:

sqlContext.setConf("spark.sql.retainGroupColumns", "false")

Behavior change on DataFrame.withColumn

Prior to 1.4, DataFrame.withColumn() supports adding a column only. The column will always be added as a new
column with its specified name in the result DataFrame even if there may be any existing columns of the same name.
Since 1.4, DataFrame.withColumn() supports adding a column of a different name from names of all existing columns or
replacing existing columns of the same name.

Note that this change is only for Scala API, not for PySpark and SparkR.

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Upgrading from Spark SQL 1.0-1.2 to 1.3

In Spark 1.3 we removed the “Alpha” label from Spark SQL and as part of this did a cleanup of the available APIs. From
Spark 1.3 onwards, Spark SQL will provide binary compatibility with other releases in the 1.X series. This compatibility
guarantee excludes APIs that are explicitly marked as unstable (i.e., DeveloperAPI or Experimental).

Rename of SchemaRDD to DataFrame

The largest change that users will notice when upgrading to Spark SQL 1.3 is that SchemaRDD has been renamed to
DataFrame. This is primarily because DataFrames no longer inherit from RDD directly, but instead provide most of the
functionality that RDDs provide though their own implementation. DataFrames can still be converted to RDDs by calling
the .rdd method.

In Scala there is a type alias from SchemaRDD to DataFrame to provide source compatibility for some use cases. It is still
recommended that users update their code to use DataFrame instead. Java and Python users will need to update their
code.

Unification of the Java and Scala APIs

Prior to Spark 1.3 there were separate Java compatible classes (JavaSQLContext and JavaSchemaRDD) that mirrored the
Scala API. In Spark 1.3 the Java API and Scala API have been unified. Users of either language should use SQLContext
and DataFrame. In general theses classes try to use types that are usable from both languages (i.e. Array instead of
language specific collections). In some cases where no common type exists (e.g., for passing in closures or Maps)
function overloading is used instead.

Additionally the Java specific types API has been removed. Users of both Scala and Java should use the classes
present in org.apache.spark.sql.types to describe schema programmatically.

Isolation of Implicit Conversions and Removal of dsl Package (Scala-only)

Many of the code examples prior to Spark 1.3 started with import sqlContext._, which brought all of the functions
from sqlContext into scope. In Spark 1.3 we have isolated the implicit conversions for converting RDDs into DataFrames
into an object inside of the SQLContext. Users should now write import sqlContext.implicits._.

Additionally, the implicit conversions now only augment RDDs that are composed of Products (i.e., case classes or
tuples) with a method toDF, instead of applying automatically.

When using function inside of the DSL (now replaced with the DataFrame API) users used to import
org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.dsl. Instead the public dataframe functions API should be used: import
org.apache.spark.sql.functions._.

Removal of the type aliases in org.apache.spark.sql for DataType (Scala-only)

Spark 1.3 removes the type aliases that were present in the base sql package for DataType. Users should instead
import the classes in org.apache.spark.sql.types

UDF Registration Moved to sqlContext.udf (Java & Scala)

Functions that are used to register UDFs, either for use in the DataFrame DSL or SQL, have been moved into the udf
object in SQLContext.

Scala Java

sqlContext.udf.register("strLen", (s: String) => s.length())

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Python UDF registration is unchanged.

Python DataTypes No Longer Singletons

When using DataTypes in Python you will need to construct them (i.e. StringType()) instead of referencing a singleton.

Compatibility with Apache Hive

Spark SQL is designed to be compatible with the Hive Metastore, SerDes and UDFs. Currently Hive SerDes and UDFs
are based on Hive 1.2.1, and Spark SQL can be connected to different versions of Hive Metastore (from 0.12.0 to 2.1.1.
Also see [Interacting with Different Versions of Hive Metastore] (#interacting-with-different-versions-of-hive-metastore)).

Deploying in Existing Hive Warehouses

The Spark SQL Thrift JDBC server is designed to be “out of the box” compatible with existing Hive installations. You do
not need to modify your existing Hive Metastore or change the data placement or partitioning of your tables.

Supported Hive Features

Spark SQL supports the vast majority of Hive features, such as:

Hive query statements, including:

SELECT
GROUP BY
ORDER BY
CLUSTER BY
SORT BY
All Hive operators, including:
Relational operators (=, ⇔, ==, <>, <, >, >=, <=, etc)
Arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /, %, etc)
Logical operators (AND, &&, OR, ||, etc)
Complex type constructors
Mathematical functions (sign, ln, cos, etc)
String functions (instr, length, printf, etc)
User defined functions (UDF)
User defined aggregation functions (UDAF)
User defined serialization formats (SerDes)
Window functions
Joins
JOIN
{LEFT|RIGHT|FULL} OUTER JOIN
LEFT SEMI JOIN
CROSS JOIN
Unions
Sub-queries
SELECT col FROM ( SELECT a + b AS col from t1) t2
Sampling
Explain
Partitioned tables including dynamic partition insertion
View
All Hive DDL Functions, including:
CREATE TABLE
CREATE TABLE AS SELECT

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ALTER TABLE
Most Hive Data types, including:
TINYINT
SMALLINT
INT
BIGINT
BOOLEAN
FLOAT
DOUBLE
STRING
BINARY
TIMESTAMP
DATE
ARRAY<>
MAP<>
STRUCT<>

Unsupported Hive Functionality

Below is a list of Hive features that we don’t support yet. Most of these features are rarely used in Hive deployments.

Major Hive Features

Tables with buckets: bucket is the hash partitioning within a Hive table partition. Spark SQL doesn’t support
buckets yet.

Esoteric Hive Features

UNION type
Unique join
Column statistics collecting: Spark SQL does not piggyback scans to collect column statistics at the moment and
only supports populating the sizeInBytes field of the hive metastore.

Hive Input/Output Formats

File format for CLI: For results showing back to the CLI, Spark SQL only supports TextOutputFormat.
Hadoop archive

Hive Optimizations

A handful of Hive optimizations are not yet included in Spark. Some of these (such as indexes) are less important due to
Spark SQL’s in-memory computational model. Others are slotted for future releases of Spark SQL.

Block level bitmap indexes and virtual columns (used to build indexes)
Automatically determine the number of reducers for joins and groupbys: Currently in Spark SQL, you need to
control the degree of parallelism post-shuffle using “SET spark.sql.shuffle.partitions=[num_tasks];”.
Meta-data only query: For queries that can be answered by using only meta data, Spark SQL still launches tasks to
compute the result.
Skew data flag: Spark SQL does not follow the skew data flags in Hive.
STREAMTABLE hint in join: Spark SQL does not follow the STREAMTABLE hint.
Merge multiple small files for query results: if the result output contains multiple small files, Hive can optionally
merge the small files into fewer large files to avoid overflowing the HDFS metadata. Spark SQL does not support
that.

Reference
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Data Types
Spark SQL and DataFrames support the following data types:

Numeric types
ByteType: Represents 1-byte signed integer numbers. The range of numbers is from -128 to 127.
ShortType: Represents 2-byte signed integer numbers. The range of numbers is from -32768 to 32767.
IntegerType: Represents 4-byte signed integer numbers. The range of numbers is from -2147483648 to
2147483647.
LongType: Represents 8-byte signed integer numbers. The range of numbers is from -9223372036854775808 to
9223372036854775807.
FloatType: Represents 4-byte single-precision floating point numbers.
DoubleType: Represents 8-byte double-precision floating point numbers.
DecimalType: Represents arbitrary-precision signed decimal numbers. Backed internally by
java.math.BigDecimal. A BigDecimal consists of an arbitrary precision integer unscaled value and a 32-bit
integer scale.
String type
StringType: Represents character string values.
Binary type
BinaryType: Represents byte sequence values.
Boolean type
BooleanType: Represents boolean values.
Datetime type
TimestampType: Represents values comprising values of fields year, month, day, hour, minute, and second.
DateType: Represents values comprising values of fields year, month, day.
Complex types
ArrayType(elementType, containsNull): Represents values comprising a sequence of elements with the type
of elementType. containsNull is used to indicate if elements in a ArrayType value can have null values.
MapType(keyType, valueType, valueContainsNull): Represents values comprising a set of key-value pairs.
The data type of keys are described by keyType and the data type of values are described by valueType. For a
MapType value, keys are not allowed to have null values. valueContainsNull is used to indicate if values of a
MapType value can have null values.
StructType(fields): Represents values with the structure described by a sequence of StructFields (fields).
StructField(name, dataType, nullable): Represents a field in a StructType. The name of a field is
indicated by name. The data type of a field is indicated by dataType. nullable is used to indicate if values of
this fields can have null values.

Scala Java Python R

All data types of Spark SQL are located in the package org.apache.spark.sql.types. You can access them by doing

import org.apache.spark.sql.types._

Find full example code at "examples/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala" in the Spark repo.

Data type Value type in Scala API to access or create a data type

ByteType Byte ByteType

ShortType Short ShortType

IntegerType Int IntegerType

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LongType Long LongType

FloatType Float FloatType

DoubleType Double DoubleType

DecimalType java.math.BigDecimal DecimalType

StringType String StringType

BinaryType Array[Byte] BinaryType

BooleanType Boolean BooleanType

TimestampType java.sql.Timestamp TimestampType

DateType java.sql.Date DateType

ArrayType scala.collection.Seq ArrayType(elementType, [containsNull])

Note: The default value of containsNull is
true.

MapType scala.collection.Map MapType(keyType, valueType,

[valueContainsNull])
Note: The default value of valueContainsNull
is true.

StructType org.apache.spark.sql.Row StructType(fields)

Note: fields is a Seq of StructFields. Also,
two fields with the same name are not
allowed.

StructField The value type in Scala of the data type of StructField(name, dataType, [nullable])
this field (For example, Int for a StructField Note: The default value of nullable is true.
with the data type IntegerType)

NaN Semantics
There is specially handling for not-a-number (NaN) when dealing with float or double types that does not exactly
match standard floating point semantics. Specifically:

NaN = NaN returns true.

In aggregations all NaN values are grouped together.
NaN is treated as a normal value in join keys.
NaN values go last when in ascending order, larger than any other numeric value.

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