lance-format / lance-format/lance

Simplify Schema implementation in Rust

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enhancement rust
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

We have a custom schema implementation, but we so often convert it to/from Arrow schemas, it might make sense to implement it as:

pub struct Schema {
    schema: Arc<arrow_schema::Schema>,
    /// Field ids, in depth-first order
    field_ids: Vec<i32>,
}

This would be quick to convert to Arrow when we need to.

Getting by field id wouldn't be slower, as we already do a linear search of fields anyways. We could make it fast by doing field_ids: HashMap<i32, Arc<arrow_schema::Field> if we wanted to.

Getting the id of a given field would be harder, though.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the current custom Schema implementation and every path that converts it to or from Arrow schemas. Review how field-id lookup and retrieving an id for a field currently work. Done means the representation can use an Arrow schema without slowing or breaking those behaviors, with tests covering the conversion and lookups.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
data-engineering
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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