Stratosphere
  1. Documentation
  2. Programming Guides
  3. Java

Writing a PACT Program

This section assumes you are familiar with the PACT Programming Model. It explains how you implement a designed pact program. We start with the implementation of a PACT program and explain later how programs are packaged for execution.

Implement a PACT Program

The implementation of PACT programs is done in Java. This section describes the required components, the interfaces and abstract classes to implement and extend, and how to assemble them to a valid PACT program.
A set of example PACT programs with links to their source code can be found in the Examples section.

Code Dependencies

PACT programs depend on the pact-common.jar and transitively on its dependencies. The easiest way to resolve all dependencies is to include the public Stratosphere Maven repository into your pom.xml file and declare the pact-common artifact as a dependency.
The following code snippet shows the required sections in the pom.xml of your Maven project:

<project>
  ...
  <repositories>
    <repository>
      <id>stratosphere.eu</id>
      <url>http://www.stratosphere.eu/maven2/</url>
    </repository>
    ...
  </repositories>
  ...
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>eu.stratosphere</groupId>
      <artifactId>pact-common</artifactId>
      <version>0.2</version>
      <type>jar</type>
      <scope>compile</scope>
    </dependency>
    ...
  </dependencies>
...
</project>

Basic Components and Structure of a PACT Program

A PACT program basically consist of four components:

* Stub implementations: Your job logic goes into PACT stub implementations. Stubs are templates for first-order user functions that are executed in parallel. Stub implementations extend the stubs found in eu.stratosphere.pact.common.stub. You need to extend the stub that corresponds to the Input Contract for that specific user function. For example, if your function should use a Match contract, than you need to extend the MatchStub.

* Plan construction: A class that implements the interface eu.stratosphere.pact.common.plan.PlanAssembler provides PACT job plans. The method getPlan(String …) constructs the plan of a PACT Job. The plan consists of connected Input Contracts (found in eu.stratosphere.pact.common.contract). Each Input Contract has an own contract class. A contract is initialized with the corresponding PACT stub implementation. Contracts are assembled to a contract graph with their setInput() (setFirstInput()/setSecondInput()) methods. A plan (eu.stratosphere.pact.common.plan.Plan) is generated and initialized with all DataSinks of the assembled contract graph. Finally, the plan is returned by the getPlan(String …) method. By default, all PACTs are executed single-threaded (only one instance is started). To run a PACT in parallel, you must specify a degree of parallelization at the PACT contract using the method setDegreeOfParallelsm(int dop);.

Reading Data Sources

Nephele reads its data from file systems, in the distributed setup typically the Hadoop Distributed Filesystem (HDFS), in the local setup typically the local file system. Data is fed into a PACT program with DataSourceContracts. A DataSourceContract is instantiated during plan construction with a path (HDFS path or local path) to the data it will provide. The path may point to a single file or to a directory.
If the data source is a directory, all (non-recursively) contained files are read and fed into the PACT program.

Writing Result Data

Nephele writes result data to a file system. A PACT program emits result data with a DataSinkContract. During plan construction, a DataSinkContract is instantiated with a HDFS path (or local path) to which the result data is written. Result data can be written either as a single file or as a collection of files. If the data shall be written to a single file, the provided path must point to file.
Attention: In case the file already exists, it will be overwritten! Result data will be written to a single file, if the DataSink task runs with a degree-of-parallelism of one. In that case, only a single parallel instance of the DataSink is created!
If the output of the result should be done in parallel, the output path must be an existing directory or a directory is created. This is not possible if the target path is an existing file. Each parallel instance of the DataSink task will write a file into the output directory. The name of the file is the number of the parallel instance of the DataSink subtask.

Reduce Combiners

The PACT Programming Model does also support optional combiners for Reduce stubs.
Combiners are implemented by overriding the combine() method of the corresponding Reduce stub (eu.stratosphere.pact.common.stub.ReduceStub). To notify the optimizer of the combine() implementation the Reduce stub must be annotated with the Combinable annotation (eu.stratosphere.pact.common.contract.ReduceContract.Combinable).

Attention: The combiner will not be used, if the annotation is missing. Annotating a Reduce stub although combine() was not implemented may cause incorrect results, unless the combine function is identical to the reduce function!

User Code Annotations

Stub Annotations are realized as Java annotations and defined in eu.stratosphere.pact.common.stubs.StubAnnotation.

There are two ways to attach the annotations.

  1. Attach the annotation as a class annotation directly at the stub class.
  2. Set the annotation at the contract object using the method setStubAnnotation(…).

DataSources can also be annotated. Because annotations of DataSources will mostly depend on the input data, they cannot be attached to DataSource stub classes, i.e. InputFormats. Instead, they can only be attached to DataSource contracts which include the definition of the input location using the setStubAnnotation(…) method.

Configuration of Stubs

To improve the re-usability of stub implementations, stubs can be parametrized, e.g. to have configurable filter values instead of hard-coding them into the stub implementation.

Stubs can be configured with custom parameters by overriding the method configure(Configuration parameters) in your stub implementation. The PACT framework calls configure() with a Configuration object that holds all parameters which were passed to the stub implementation during plan construction. To set stub parameters, use the methods setStubParameter(String key, String value), setStubParameter(String key, int value), and setStubParameter(String key, boolean value) of the contract object that contains the stub class to parametrize.
See the FilterO Map stub of the TPCHQuery3 Example Program to learn how to configure Stubs.

Compiler Hints

During optimization, the compiler estimates costs for all generated execution plans. The costs of a plan are derived from size estimations of intermediate results. Due to the nature of black-box stub code, the optimizer can only make rough conservative estimations. Later stages in the plan often have no estimates at all. In this case the compiler chooses robust default strategies that behave well for large result sizes. The accuracy of these estimates can be significantly improved by supplying compiler hints to the optimizer.

Compiler hints can be given to the optimizer by setting them at the contracts during plan construction. This is done by first fetching the contract's eu.stratosphere.pact.common.contract.CompilerHints object:

Contract.getCompilerHints()

Compiler hints can then be set on the CompilerHints object. The following compiler hints are currently supported:

  • Distinct Count: Specifies the number of distinct values for a set of fields. Set by:
CompilerHints.setDistinctCount(FieldSet fields, long card)

Cardinality must be > 0.

  • Average Number of Records per Distinct Fields: Specifies the average number of records that share the same values for the specified set of fields. Set by:
CompilerHints.setAvgNumRecordsPerDistinctFields(FieldSet fields, float avgNumRecords)

Average number of records must be > 0.

  • Unique Fields: Specifies that a set of fields has unique values. Set by:
CompilerHints.setUniqueField(FieldSet uniqueFieldSet)
  • Average Bytes per Record: Specifies the average width of emitted records in bytes. The width is the sum of the sizes of all serialized fields. Set by:
CompilerHints.setAvgBytesPerRecord(float avgBytes)

Average bytes per record must be >= 0.

  • Average Number of Records Emitted Per Stub Call: Specifies the average number of emitted records per stub call. If not set, “1.0f” is used as default value. Set by:
CompilerHints.setAvgRecordsEmittedPerStubCall(float avgRecordsEmittedPerStubCall)

Average records emitted per stub call must be >= 0.

Best Practices

This page only explains the technical details of how to write a Pact program.
Have a look at Best Practices of Pact Programming for concrete implementation guidelines.

Package a PACT Program

To run a PACT program on a Nephele system all required Java classes must be available to all participating Nephele TaskManagers. Therefore, all Java classes that are part of the PACT program (stub implementations, data types, data formats, external classes) must be packaged into a jar file. To make the jar file an executable PACT program, it must also contain a class that implements the PlanAssembler interface. In addition, you must register in the jar file's manifest using the attribute Pact-Assembler-Class. See Executing Pact Programs for details.

Best Practices of Pact Programming

This page provides a brief overview of insights and strategies that we learned during programming with PACTs to achieve better performance.

Consider the Number of Stub Calls

  • You should consider that your stub methods usually are called extremely often. A map(…) function is called once per processed record.
  • As a (very) general guideline, implement your methods with the least possible overhead you can think of. Move any invariant code out of the function. The open(Configuration) and close() methods are places for initialization and tear-down logic.

Object Instantiations and Modifications

  • Avoid instantiation of objects as much as possible. Recall that many method calls happen in the course of a program. Even though the object instantiation itself is pretty cheap in Java, it will eventually cause many short-lived objects to be created. The tracing of a plethora of dead objects as well as the eventual reclamation of their memory space by the garbage collector has a cost that is often underestimated. Careless object instantiation is a major cause for bad performance.

  • Reuse object instances. Once an data type object and a record are emitted to the Collector, their instances are safe to be reused, because the data will have been serialized at this point. The following code illustrates that at the example of the line tokenizing mapper in the WordCount example. The map function reuses all object instances. The PactString containing the next token is reused after it has been emitted to the Collector.

    public static class TokenizeLine extends MapStub
{
    // initialize reusable mutable objects
    private final PactRecord outputRecord = new PactRecord();
    private final PactString word = new PactString();
    private final PactInteger one = new PactInteger(1);
 
    private final AsciiUtils.WhitespaceTokenizer tokenizer = new AsciiUtils.WhitespaceTokenizer();
 
    @Override
    public void map(PactRecord record, Collector<PactRecord> collector){
        // get the first field (as type PactString) from the record
        PactString line = record.getField(0, PactString.class);
 
        // normalize the line
        AsciiUtils.replaceNonWordChars(line, ' ');
        AsciiUtils.toLowerCase(line);
 
        // tokenize the line
        this.tokenizer.setStringToTokenize(line);
        while (tokenizer.next(this.word)) {
            // we emit a (word, 1) pair 
            this.outputRecord.setField(0, this.word);
            this.outputRecord.setField(1, this.one);
            collector.collect(this.outputRecord);
        }
    }
}

Implement your own efficient Data Types

  • Use Java's primitive types (int, double, boolean, char, …) as much as possible when implementing your own data types and try to avoid using objects.
  • The provided data types are fine for rapid prototyping, but you should avoid composing them to more complex data types and rather use primitives, if you aim for performance.
  • The previous statement holds especially for the provided collection types, such as PactList and PactMap.
  • Pay attention to efficient serialization and deserialization methods. Serialization and deserialization occur very often, whenever network is involved, data is sorted or hashed, or checkpoints are created.
  • If your data type acts as a key, consider also implementing the NormalizableKey interface. That allows the system to operate more efficiently during sorting.

Implement State-Free Stub Methods

  • Stub methods are executed in parallel. On the same physical node (or Virtual Machine), all stubs run in the same JVM in concurrent threads.
  • Ideally, stub methods should be implemented state-free, following the principle of functional programming. All invocations of the method stub should be completely independent from one another and no shared variables are used. If state needs to be held, use instance variables. The same single stub object is used throughout the life of a single parallel thread, so the state within a thread can be maintained through instance variables.
  • Avoid class (static) variables. Their scope is within the JVM of the physical instance (or VM). Even when specifying a default intra-node parallelism of one, more parallel instances of your stub may be scheduled to the same JVM, because TaskManagers on large machines may be assigned multiple smaller virtual instances. Even if the statically referenced objects are thread-safe, the performed synchronization may cause significant overhead through lock congestion.
  • Using static objects, can cause unpredictable behavior, if the statically referenced objects (or any methods of those objects) are not thread-safe. In the worst case, that can lead to exceptions and cause the job to fail repeatedly.
  • Using state-free or thread-safe processing objects (such as Formatter, Parser, and so on) in your stub methods is fine. These objects should be created during instantiation (within the constructor) or using configure() method of the stub.

Use User Code Annotations and Compiler Hints

  • User Code Annotations give the optimizer information about the behavior of your stub methods. The optimizer can frequently exploit that information to generate execution plans that avoid expensive operations such as data shipping and sorting. Be sure to attach only valid annotations to your function. An incorrect annotation that the function violates may cause incorrect results. Refer to the list of annotations for an overview of available annotations, and to the programming tutorial to learn how to attach them. Our examples also show how to correctly use them. We are currenlty prototyping static code analysis methods to infer those annotations automatically.
  • Give the optimizer as much information as possible. Average-records-per-stub-call, average-record-width, key-cardinality, and values-per-key are important numbers for the optimizer that help generating better estimates consequently saving costs. See the Compiler Hints section for the supported compiler hints and how to set them.

Pact Record

The PactRecord is the basic data type that flows in the PACT data flow programs. It replaces the Key/Value pair in MapReduce and is more generic and flexible.

The Pact Record can be thought of as a schema free tuple that may contain arbitrary fields. The fields may be any data type that implements the Value interface, which describes how the type is serialized and deserialized.

The interpretation of a field is up to the user code. Whenever a field in the record is accessed, the user code must specify the position of the field to access and the data type as which to read it. A simple example of a filtering map that accesses a single integer field is given below:

@Override
public void map(PactRecord record, Collector<PactRecord> out) throws Exception {
 
    PactInteger theInt = record.getField(1, PactInteger.class);
    if (theInt.getValue() > RANKFILTER) {
        out.collect(record);
    }
}

Lazy DeSerialization

When the record is read from a stream, all fields are typically in a binary representation. Fields are lazily deserialized when accessed and then cached. Any modifications to the record are also cached and lazily serialized when needed (for example for network communication). It may happen that the record never serializes data, for example when it is piped to a successive task which filters it.

In the above example of the filtering map, the functions parameter record is re-emitted. Because the record is unmodified, it can use its original binary signature and will not invoke any data-types serialization code. This is rather efficient. For records where only a subset of the fields are changed, the unchanged ones are kept in their original binary representation, avoiding serialization and deserialization effort.

Mutable Objects

Warning: It is important to treat PactRecords as mutable objects. They were specifically designed for reusing objects and perform quite a bit of caching and lazy work to increase performance. That makes them rather heavy-weight objects which put a lot of pressure on the garbage collector, if they are not reused.

PactRecords reuse internal data structures for performance reasons. You should refrain from creating instances in the user function. If the record is unchanged (or only modified at some positions) it is best to emit the instance that was supplied in the function call, as in the above example of the filtering map function. If you emit records whose contents is very much unrelated to the received records, create a single instance outside the function and reuse that one. It is save to reuse any PactRecord object once it has been handed to the Collector. The code below (from the WordCount example) illustrates that:

public static class TokenizeLine extends MapStub
{
    // initialize reusable mutable objects
    private final PactRecord outputRecord = new PactRecord();
    private final PactString word = new PactString();
    private final PactInteger one = new PactInteger(1);
 
    private final AsciiUtils.WhitespaceTokenizer tokenizer = new AsciiUtils.WhitespaceTokenizer();
 
    @Override
    public void map(PactRecord record, Collector<PactRecord> collector){
        // get the first field (as type PactString) from the record
        PactString line = record.getField(0, PactString.class);
 
        // normalize the line
        AsciiUtils.replaceNonWordChars(line, ' ');
        AsciiUtils.toLowerCase(line);
 
        // tokenize the line
        this.tokenizer.setStringToTokenize(line);
        while (tokenizer.next(this.word)) {
            // we emit a (word, 1) pair 
            this.outputRecord.setField(0, this.word);
            this.outputRecord.setField(1, this.one);
            collector.collect(this.outputRecord);
        }
    }
}

Pact Records are also reused by the runtime. Whenever a function is invoked multiple times, it is typically supplied with the same PactRecord Object, with different contents each time. This means that you cannot keep references to the object across function invocations, because the object's contents will be changed. If you need to keep a copy of the entire record (which is typically an indication for bad code), create a copy of the record via PactRecord#createCopy(). In general, it is better to keep a copy of some individual fields, preferably as primitive types.

The following code will cause the list to contain multiple times the same reference:

public void reduce(Iterator<PactRecord> records, Collector<PactRecord> out) {
    List<PactRecord> list = new ArrayList<PactRecord>();
    while (records.hasNext()) {
        list.add(records.next());
    }
}

A correct and also more efficient version would be the version below. The code saves any unnecessary copying and, depending on a clever implementation of the IntList, code might run without ever instantiating an object inside the reduce function.

private final IntList list = new IntList();
 
@Override
public void reduce(Iterator<PactRecord> records, Collector<PactRecord> out) {
    list.clear();
    while (records.hasNext()) {
        PactInteger i = records.next().getField(1, PactInteger.class);
        list.add(i.getValue);
    }
 
    // do something with the list
}

Cached Fields

To save de-serialization effort, the Pact Record caches deserialized fields. That means a successive access to the fields (possibly in a succeeding function) may be a lot cheaper. The implication of that caching mechanism is that you must be careful modifying instances that you obtained from the record. In any case, any object may be reused across different function calls or records obtained from an iterator. The following example shows a possible error source:

public void map(PactRecord record, Collector<PactRecord> out) {
    PactInteger i = record.getField(0, PactInteger.class); // deserialized the value and cached the object instance
    System.out.println(i); // prints the original value
    i.setValue(42); // sets the value to the object that is also cached

    PactInteger k = record.getField(1, PactInteger.class); // returns the cached object
    System.out.println(k); // prints the 42
}

Sparsity

The record may have null fields between fields that are actually set. If a certain field is set, all yet unset fields before that field are considered null. IN the following example, fields 2 and 5 are set, while fields 1, 3, 4 are null.

PactRecord rec = new PactRecord();
rec.setField(2, new PactInteger(43290));
rec.setField(5, new PactString("some text...");

Null fields are sparsely encoded with bit masks and occupy rather little space. They allow to write code that moves little data between the fields.

Input and Output Formats

Input- and Output Formats are the sources and sinks of the records in your Pact Program dataflow and are hence the user defined functionality of the DataSources and DataSinks in your Pact Program.

Input Formats

Input formats are a generic description of how your records enter the dataflow in a parallel fashion. All input formats implement the interface eu.stratosphere.pact.common.generic.io.InputFormat. The input format describes two aspects:

  1. How to partition an input into splits that are processed in parallel.
  2. How to generate records from a split.

The input formats base classes are very generic to enable a generic type runtime. However, all subclasses that programmers typically extend are typed to PactRecord, so we will use the typed signatures in the following.

Creating Splits

The logic that generates splits is invoked on the Nephele JobManager. The InputFormat is instantiated (with its null-ary constructor) and configured via the configure(Configuration) method. Inside the configure method, parameters that define the behavior of the input format are read from the passed configuration object. For example, the file input format reads the path to the file from the configuration.

The actual split generation happens in the method InputSplit[] createInputSplits(int minNumSplits). The method creates an array of eu.stratosphere.nephele.template.InputSplits (or a subclass thereof) that describe the partitions of the data. The input split interface itself does not provide more information than the number of the split, and input formats with sophisticated partitioning typically implement more complex subclasses of InputSplit. The file input format uses for example the more specialized eu.stratosphere.nephele.fs.FileInputSplit, which holds information about the file path, the start position in the file's byte stream, the partition length, and the number of hosts where the split is locally accessible. The internal semantics of the split are not interpreted by the JobManager, but only by the input format itself, when it is assigned an input split.

The InputSplit[] createInputSplits(int minNumSplits) method is given a hint how many splits to create at least. It may create fewer, but that might result in some parallel instances not getting a split assigned.

Creating Records

In the parallel deployment, the input format class is instantiated once for each parallel instance. As before, it is configured via the configure(Configuration) method after instantiation. Splits are assigned to the parallel instances in a lazy fashion - The first one to be available gets the next split.

Once an input format is assigned a split, its open(InputSplit) method is invoked. This method must set up the internal state such that the record generation can start. As an example, the file input format reads the path of the file, opens a file input stream and seeks that stream to the position that marks the beginning of the split. The input format for delimited records eu.stratosphere.pact.common.io.DelimitedInputFormat searches the file stream for the occurrence of the next delimiter.

During the actual record generation process, the method boolean nextRecord(PactRecord record) is invoked as long as a preceding call to boolean reachedEnd() returned false. The method is always given an instance of the PactRecord, into which the contents of the record is to be put. The return value indicates whether the record is valid. The system skips records with a return value of false - that way, individual erroneous records can be skipped.

Because Stratosphere uses mutable objects (for performance reasons), the given PactRecord object is typically the same each time. The input format must not use the object to hold whatever state across function invocations.

Finally, when no more records are read from the split, the close() method is called.

Note that the same instance of the input format is used for multiple splits, if a parallel instance is assigned more than one input split. In that case, a closed input format is opened again with another split, so it must make sure that closing opening cleans and resets internal state accordingly.

Input Formats Examples

Whole File Split Input Format

A simple change to the file input format is to create only one split per file. That is useful, if for example the data is encoded in a fashion that does not permit a read to start in the middle of the file. To enforce such split generation, simply override the split creation method as shown below:

public FileInputSplit[] createInputSplits(int minNumSplits) throws IOException {
    final Path path = this.filePath;
    final FileSystem fs = path.getFileSystem();
 
    final FileStatus pathFile = fs.getFileStatus(path);
 
    if (pathFile.isDir()) {
        // input is directory. list all contained files
        List<FileInputSplit> splits = new ArrayList<FileInputSplit>();
        final FileStatus[] dir = fs.listStatus(path);
        for (int i = 0; i < dir.length; i++) {
            final BlockLocation[] blocks = fs.getFileBlockLocations(dir[i], 0, dir[i].getLen());
            splits.add(new FileInputSplit(i, dir[i].getPath(), 0, dir[i].getLen(), blocks[0].getHosts()));
        }
        return (FileInputSplit[]) splits.toArray(new FileInputSplit[splits.size()]);
    } else { 
        // analogous for one file
    }
}

A Data Generating Input Format

You can easily create an input format that runs a data generator rather than reading the data with the help of the eu.stratosphere.pact.common.io.GenericInputFormat. It uses a generic input split type that holds no information except its partition number. The example below shows a minimal example:

public class GeneratorFormat extends GenericInputFormat
{
    private Random random;
    private int numRecordsRemaining;
 
    private final PactInteger theInteger = new PactInteger();
    private final PactString theInteger = new PactString();
 
    @Override
    public void configure(Configuration parameters) {
        super.configure(parameters);
        this.numRecordsRemaining = parameters.getInteger("generator.numRecords", 100000000);
    }
 
    @Override
    public void open(GenericInputSplit split) throws IOException {
        this.random = new Random(split.getSplitNumber());
    }
 
    @Override
    public boolean reachedEnd() throws IOException {
        return this.numRecordsRemaining > 0;
    }
 
    @Override
    public boolean nextRecord(PactRecord record) throws IOException {
        this.theInteger.setValue(this.random.nextInt());
        generateRandomString(this.theString, this.random);
 
        record.setField(0, theInteger);
        record.setField(1, theString);
        this.numRecordsRemaining--;
        return true;
    }
 
    private static void generateRandomString(PactString target, Random rnd) {
        ...
    }
}

Note that the above code example works with mutable objects and reuses object instances across function calls. In general, user code should always try to do this, as reference tracing and object garbage collection can become a serious computational bottleneck. See Advanced Pact Programming

Testing PACTs

Stratosphere incorporates a test harness for unit tests of PACT stub implementations and PACT programs. Similar to JUnit test cases, one or a pipeline of stub implementations can be tested individually to guarantee certain behavior for some use and edge cases. The tests do not require any specific installation and do not perform any network communication. Thus, a test usually completes within seconds.

The test harness is located in the pact-client Maven module in the package eu.stratosphere.pact.testing.

Simple Case

Consider the following minimalistic map that simply echos all input values.

@SameKey
public class IdentityMap extends MapStub {
    @Override
    public void map(final PactRecord record, final Collector<PactRecord> out) {
        out.collect(record);
    }
}

In order to test that the map performs its expected behavior (i.e. forwarding all input records), the following test case verifies the correct behavior for one input/output combination.

public class IdentityMapTest {
 
    @Test
    public void shouldEchoOutput() {
        final MapContract map = MapContract.builder(IdentityMap.class).name("Map").build();
        TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan(map);
        testPlan.getInput().
            add(new PactInteger(1), new PactString("test1")).
            add(new PactInteger(2), new PactString("test2"));
        testPlan.getExpectedOutput(PactInteger.class, PactString.class).
            add(new PactInteger(1), new PactString("test1")).
            add(new PactInteger(2), new PactString("test2"));
        testPlan.run();
    }
}

The test initializes a contract with the identity map stub and creates a TestPlan with it. The following lines initialize the input tuples of the test and the expected output tuples. Please note, that you have to specify the expected types.

Finally, the plan is executed and the result is compared with the expected output. In case of unequal output, the JUnit test will fail due to an AssertionError. Additionally, if the PACT had an runtime error, the test would fail with an AssertionError, too.

Multiple PACTs

Testing a single PACT stub implementation is not sufficient in many cases. If the collective behavior of a whole PACT pipeline needs to be tested, the PACTs need to be chained similarly to a normal PACT program.

final MapContract map1 = MapContract.builder(IdentityMap.class).name("Map").build();
final MapContract map2 = MapContract.builder(IdentityMap.class).name("Map").input(map1).build();
TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan(map2);
testPlan.getInput().
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactString("test1")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactString("test2"));
testPlan.getExpectedOutput(PactInteger.class, PactString.class).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactString("test1")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactString("test2"));
testPlan.run();

In this simple example, the concatenated identity maps should still echo the input.

Explicit Data Sources/Sinks

The framework automatically adds data sources and data sinks for each unconnected input and output respectively. However, there are many cases where the user needs to exert more control. For example, if he specifically wants to test a new file format.

final FileDataSource source = new FileDataSource(IntegerInFormat.class, "TestPlan/test.txt");

final MapContract map = MapContract.builder(IdentityMap.class).name("Map").input(read).build();

FileDataSink output = new FileDataSink(IntegerOutFormat.class, "output");
output.setInput(map);

TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan(output);
testPlan.run();

Multiple Inputs

So far, we have only seen programs with one implicit data source and sink. If multiple data sources are involved, there are two ways to specify the input.

CrossContract crossContract = CrossContract.builder(CartesianProduct.class).build();
 
TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan(crossContract);
testPlan.getInput(0).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactString("test1")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactString("test2"));
testPlan.getInput(1).
    add(new PactInteger(3), new PactString("test3")).
    add(new PactInteger(4), new PactString("test4"));
 
testPlan.getExpectedOutput(PactInteger.class, PactInteger.class, PactString.class, PactString.class).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactInteger(3), new PactString("test1"), new PactString("test3")).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactInteger(4), new PactString("test1"), new PactString("test4")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactInteger(3), new PactString("test2"), new PactString("test3")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactInteger(4), new PactString("test2"), new PactString("test4"));
testPlan.run();

Additionally, when the sources have been explicitly defined, it is possible to identify the input with the source.

CrossContract crossContract = CrossContract.builder(CartesianProduct.class).build();
 
TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan(crossContract);
// first and second input are added in TestPlan
testPlan.getInput((GenericDataSource<?>) crossContract.getFirstInputs().get(0)).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactString("test1")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactString("test2"));
testPlan.getInput((GenericDataSource<?>) crossContract.getSecondInputs().get(0)).
    add(new PactInteger(3), new PactString("test3")).
    add(new PactInteger(4), new PactString("test4"));
 
testPlan.getExpectedOutput(PactInteger.class, PactInteger.class, PactString.class, PactString.class).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactInteger(3), new PactString("test1"), new PactString("test3")).
    add(new PactInteger(1), new PactInteger(4), new PactString("test1"), new PactString("test4")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactInteger(3), new PactString("test2"), new PactString("test3")).
    add(new PactInteger(2), new PactInteger(4), new PactString("test2"), new PactString("test4"));
testPlan.run();

Use Test Data from Files

It is also possible to either specify data sources/sinks explicitly or load the input and/or output tuples from a file.

final MapContract map = MapContract.builder(IdentityMap.class).name("Map").build();
TestPlan testPlan = new TestPlan(map);
testPlan.getInput().fromFile(IntegerInFormat.class, "test.txt");
testPlan.getExpectedOutput(output, PactInteger.class, PactString.class).fromFile(IntegerInFormat.class, "test.txt");
testPlan.run();

How it works

The TestPlan transparently adds data sources and sinks to the PACT program if they are not specified. Expected and actual output tuples are sorted before comparison since the actual order is usually not of interest.

All network communications are mocked and the test cases are executed with low memory settings for the MemoryManager. All channels are replaced with InMemoryChannels to enable fast execution.

However, all PACTs are still executed in their own threads to maintain the consumer-producer notions. It is also possible to set the degree of parallelism for all PACTs or the complete test.

Since only little code of the PACT execution is mocked, passed PACT tests are likely to work in the same way on a complete cluster. However, the partitioning of the data is not emulated. Therefore, the PACT tests are not a replacement for integration tests on a real cluster.

Unit Tests with Mockito and Powermock

Readings:

Mockito is a Test Framework extending JUnit. It provides easy mechanism to mock objects in a unit test. Powermock extends Mockito with some features to test “untestable” code (e.g. static methods, local variables …).

Example: test the PactCompiler.compile(.) method

signature of the method:

public OptimizedPlan compile(Plan pactPlan) throws CompilerException

first we have to mock the Plan object pactPlan:

@Mock Plan myTestPlan;

To give the mocked object a desired behaviour we use the API of Mockito. E.g. we want, that the call to Plan.getMaxNumberMachines() returns 1:

//return a valid maximum number of machines
when(myTestPlan.getMaxNumberMachines()).thenReturn(1);

Finally, if all dependent objects are mocked, we want to test the method:

PactCompiler toTest = new PactCompiler();
 
// now the compile schould succeed
toTest.compile(myTestPlan);
verify(myTestPlan, times(1)).getMaxNumberMachines();

the verify-call checks, whether the method getMaxNumberMachines() was called exactly once. The times(1) is called a VerificationMode in Mockito. There are more VerificationModes available. See the Mockito Documentation for more modes and details.

Note: To run the Testcase you should use the @RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class) Annotation for the test class.

local variables in PactCompiler.compile(.)

A closer look to the compile()-method shows some “untestable” code. There are local variables instantiated, which can not be mocked with Mockito, since the instantiation is done in the method. To mock this local variables, we use Powermock:

first we have to use the PowermockRunner as Testrunner:

@RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)
@PrepareForTest(PactCompiler.class)
public class TestPactCompiler {

The @PrepareForTest annotation tells Powermock, that the class to test (PactCompiler) has some local variables that we want to mock (same applies to static methods).

Inside the test method we tell Powermock, that the instantiation of a class of type OptimizedPlan shall return a mocked object:

whenNew(OptimizedPlan.class).withArguments(Matchers.any(Collection.class), Matchers.any(Collection.class),
                Matchers.any(Collection.class), Matchers.any(String.class)).thenReturn(
                this.mockedOP);

The code means, that a call to the constructor of OptimizedPlan with argument types (Collection,Collection,Collection,String) with any arguments (Matchers.any(.)) shall return our mock object mockedOP. For a more comprehensive view on the test class, see the attached file.

declarative Matchers with Hamcrest

Since JUnit 4.x declarative matchers may be used to define assertions on the outcome of tests. The core matchers of hamcrest are already part of the JUnit library and can be extended by using the hamcrest lib. The advantage of those matchers are the assertions being readable in a more intuitive format and the ability to implement own matchers. The following assertion almost reads like an english sentence (and thus reduces the time to understand/the need to document the test):

assertThat(matchCount, is(lessThan(2)));

Execute PACT Programs

The Stratosphere system comes with different clients for PACT program submission.
Currently, we have a command-line client, a web-client, and a Java library to submit PACT programs directly from within an arbitrary Java program (also called embedded client).

Note: Each client needs access at least to a minimal configuration. As the bare minimum, the connection information for Nephele's JobManager (host and port) must be set in the configuration that the client uses. When started from the same directory, the command-line client and the web-client share Nephele's configuration. The embedded client, however, must be passed a configuration with those values manually. Keep in mind that the PACT compiler runs in the client, so it will operate using the configuration of the client.

Prepare a Program for Execution

In order to execute a PACT program on a Nephele cluster it must be packaged into a JAR file. That file needs to contain all necessary class files for execution. The JAR typically has a Manifest file with a special entry
”Pact-Assembler-Class: <your-plan-assember-class>” which defines the plan assembler class.
Example manifest file:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Pact-Assembler-Class: eu.stratosphere.pact.example.wordcount.WordCount

If the plan assembler class is not described within the manifest, its fully qualified name must be passed as a parameter to the client.

Specify Data Paths

The paths for data sources and data sinks must be specified as absolute paths with filesystem prefix. Data can be read from single files or directories. For more detail consult the Tutorial on How to write a Pact Program.

  • HDFS Path hdfs://host:port/path/to/data/in/hdfs
  • Local Path (for local setup) file:///path/to/data/in/local/fs

The PACT Command Line Client

The PACT command-line client features actions to submit, cancel, list, and get information about PACT programs.

Usage

./pact-client [[ACTION]] [[GENERAL_OPTIONS]] [[ACTION_ARGUMENTS]]
  general options:
     -h,--help      Show the help for the CLI Frontend.
     -v,--verbose   Print more detailed error messages.

Action "run" compiles and submits a PACT program.
  "run" action arguments:
     -a,--arguments <programArgs>   Pact program arguments
     -c,--class <classname>         Pact program assembler class
     -j,--jarfile <jarfile>         Pact program JAR file
     -w,--wait                      Wait until program finishes

Action "info" displays information about a PACT program.
  "info" action arguments:
     -a,--arguments <programArgs>   Pact program arguments
     -c,--class <classname>         Pact program assembler class
     -d,--description               Show argument description of pact
                                    program
     -j,--jarfile <jarfile>         Pact program JAR file
     -p,--plan                      Show execution plan of the pact
                                    program

Action "list" lists submitted PACT programs.
  "list" action arguments:
     -r,--running     Show running jobs
     -s,--scheduled   Show scheduled jobs

Action "cancel" cancels a submitted PACT program.
  "cancel" action arguments:
     -i,--jobid <jobID>   JobID to cancel

Basic Actions

  • Run WordCount PACT example program:
./bin/pact-client.sh run -j ./examples/pact/pact-examples-0.1-WordCount.jar -a 4 file:///home/user/hamlet.txt file:///home/user/wordcount_out
  • Run WordCount PACT example program (Plan-Assembler not in JAR file manifest):
./bin/pact-client.sh run -j ./examples/pact/pact-examples-0.1-WordCount.jar -c eu.stratosphere.pact.example.wordcount.WordCount -a 4 file:///home/user/hamlet.txt file:///home/user/wordcount_out
  • Display WordCount PACT example program argument description:
./bin/pact-client.sh info -d -j ./examples/pact/pact-examples-0.1-WordCount.jar
  • Display WordCount PACT example program execution plan as JSON:
./bin/pact-client.sh info -p -j ./examples/pact/pact-examples-0.1-WordCount.jar -a 4 file:///home/user/hamlet.txt file:///home/user/wordcount_out
  • List scheduled and running jobs (including job ids):
./bin/pact-client.sh list -s -r
  • Cancel a job:
./bin/pact-client.sh cancel -i <jobID>

Configure the Command Line Client

The command-line client is configured in ./conf/pact-user.xml. The configuration includes parameters that are used by the compiler, such as the default parallelism, intra-node parallelism, and the limit to the number of instances to use.
The JobManager to which PACT programs are submitted is configured by specifying host and port in ./conf/nephele-user.xml.
Refer to the Configuration Reference for details.

The PACT Web Interface

Start the Web Interface

To start the web interface execute:

./bin/pact-webfrontend.sh

By default, it is running on port 8080.

Use the Web Interface

The PACT web client has two views:

  1. A submission view to upload, preview, and submit PACT programs.
  2. An explain view to analyze the optimized plan, node properties, and optimizer estimates.
Submission View

The client is started with the submission view. The following screenshot shows the client's submission view:

Features of the submission view

  • Upload a new PACT program as JAR file: Use the form in the right bottom corner.
  • Delete a PACT program: Click on the red cross of the program to be deleted in the left hand side program list.
  • Preview a PACT program: Check the checkbox of the program to preview in the left hand side program list. If the JAR file has a valid Manifest with assembler-class entry, the program's preview is shown on the right pane.
  • Run a PACT program and show optimizer plan: Check the program to execute in the left hand side program list. Give all required parameters in the input field “Arguments” and click on the “Run job” button. After hitting the “Run job” button, the explain view will be displayed. To run the job from there, click on the “Run” button in the right bottom corner.
  • If the plan assembler class implements the PlanAssemblerDescription interface, its returned string is displayed when the program is checked.

  • If the PACT program has no Manifest file with a valid assembler-class entry, you can specify the assembler class in the “Arguments” input file before any program arguments with

    assembler <assemblerClass> <programArgs...>

  • Run a PACT program directly: Uncheck the option “Show optimizer plan” and follow the instructions as before. After hitting the “Run job” button, the job will be directly submitted to the Nephele JobManager and scheduled for execution.

Explain View

The following screenshot shows the web client's explain view:

The view displays a compiled PACT program before it is submitted to Nephele for execution and is horizontally split two parts:

  • A plan view on the upper half.
  • A detail view on the lower half.

The plan view shows the data flow of the PACT program. In contrast to the preview, which is available on the Submission View, the data flow on the Explain View shows the optimization decisions of the PACT compiler:

  • Ship Strategies: The gray boxes display the chosen ship strategy for the data flow connections.
  • Local Strategies: When clicking on the ”+” in a node's bottom right corner, the node is expanded and the chosen local strategy for that PACT is displayed.
  • Node Estimates: When clicking on the ”+” in the bottom right corner of a PACT node, the size estimates for that PACT are displayed.

The detail view shows the details of a PACT node. To change the PACT whose details are displayed, click on the corresponding node in the upper plan view. The following information is displayed:

  • PACT Properties: Details on the selected PACT. Refer to the section Writing Pact Programs to learn how to set Output Contracts and the degree of parallelism.
  • Global Data Properties: Information on the global properties of the data after the PACT (including the user function) was applied, i.e. properties that hold over all parallel instances.
  • Local Data Properties: Information on the local properties of the data after the PACT (including the user function) was applied, i.e. properties that hold within all parallel instances.
  • Size Estimates: Size estimates of the PACT compiler for relevant metrics which are the basis for the applied optimization. Estimates for the data sources are obtained through simple sampling. Estimates for further nodes are based on the Compiler Hints, or certain default assumptions.
  • Cost Estimates: Cost estimates of the PACT compiler for the selected PACT and cumulative costs for the data flow up to and including the selected PACT.
  • Compiler Hints: Compiler hints that have been attached to the PACT. Refer to the Compiler Hints section for details.

Configure the Web Interface

The web interface is configured in ./conf/pact-user.xml. Values like the server port and the directory for job uploads are defined there. The configuration also states parameters that are used by the compiler, such as the default parallelism, intra-node parallelism, and the limit to the number of instances to use.
The JobManager to which PACT programs are submitted is configured by specifying host and port in ./conf/nephele-user.xml.
Refer to the Configuration Reference for details.

The PACT Client API (Embedded Client)

For executing Pact programs from Java source code, a simplified Client API is provided. The API makes it possible to submit PACT programs from within any Java application. Both the command line client and the web client internally use that API. It consists of the following two classes:

eu.stratosphere.pact.client.nephele.api.PactProgram: This class wraps all PACT program related code. The class has to be instantiated with the path to the jar file and the arguments for the program.

eu.stratosphere.pact.client.nephele.api.Client: The client class wraps all code related to sending a program to the Nephele job manager. The relevant method is Client#run(PactProgram) method which accepts a pact program as argument and sends that to the job manager. More methods are provided, which allow for example only compilation without submission, or submission of a pre-compiled plan.

A minimal example for sending a readily packaged pact program to the job manager is:

File jar = new File("./path/to/jar");
// load configuration
GlobalConfiguration.loadConfiguration(location);
Configuration config = GlobalConfiguration.getConfiguration();

try {
  PactProgram prog = new PactProgram(jar);
  Client client = new Client(configuration);
  client.run(prog);
} catch (ProgramInvocationException e) {
  handleError(e);
} catch (ErrorInPlanAssemblerException e) {
  handleError(e);
}

As mentioned before, the embedded client requires a configuration to be passed, describing how to reach the JobManager. As a minimum, the values jobmanager.rpc.address and jobmanager.rpc.port must be set. The parameters that define the behavior of the PactCompiler (such as the default parallelism, intra-node parallelism, and the limit to the number of instances to use) are also drawn from this configuration. Please refer to the Configuration Reference for details.

As an alternative, the client can be started with a Java InetSocketAddress, that describes the connection to the JobManager. The configuration for the compiler is assumed empty in that case, causing the default parameters to be used for compilation.

User Comments

comments powered by Disqus