pydata / pydata/xarray

Support reading Zarr data via TensorStore

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enhancement topic-backends topic-zarr
Dominant language
Python
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Avg merge
2d 15h
Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

What is your issue?

TensorStore is another high performance API for reading distributed arrays in formats such as Zarr, written in C++.

It could be interesting to write an Xarray storage backend using TensorStore as an alternative way to read Zarr files.

As an exercise, I make a little demo of doing this: https://gist.github.com/shoyer/5b0c485979cc9c36a9685d8cf8e94565

I have not tested it for performance. The main annoyance is that TensorStore doesn't understand Zarr groups or Zarr array attributes, so I needed to write my own helpers for reading this metadata.

Also, there's a bit of an impedance mis-match between TensorStore (where everything returns futures) and Xarray (which assumes that indexing results in numpy arrays). This could likely be improved with some amount of effort -- in particular https://github.com/pydata/xarray/pull/6874/files should help.

CC @jbms who may have better ideas about how to use the TensorStore API.

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 with the linked TensorStore demo gist and inspect the changes in xarray PR #6874. Define the scope for a TensorStore-backed Zarr reader, including group and array metadata and the future-to-indexing mismatch; done should include a tested backend design and implementation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, numpy, python
Domain
backend, data, distributed-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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