snowflakedb / snowflakedb/snowpark-python

SNOW-654710: Drop cached temporary tables that are no longer being referenced

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feature
Dominant language
Python
Stars
341
Forks
155
Avg merge
4d 16h
Merged PRs (30d)
27

Description

What is the current behavior?

cache_result does not clean up a temporary table when it is no longer being referenced. This results in unnecessary storage credits throughout the entirety of the session whenever a result is re-cached, which is common thing to do in an interactive session.

>>> dff = session.create_dataframe([1,2,3])

>>> dff.cache_result().explain()

---------DATAFRAME EXECUTION PLAN----------
Query List:
1.
SELECT  *  FROM (SNOWPARK_TEMP_TABLE_X3FCJ1U38A)
...

--------------------------------------------

>>> dff.cache_result().explain()

---------DATAFRAME EXECUTION PLAN----------
Query List:
1.
SELECT  *  FROM (SNOWPARK_TEMP_TABLE_Z9H68STVDH)
....

What is the desired behavior?

Ideal behavior would be a temporary table cleanup by defining a __del__ method for snowflake.snowpark.dataframe.DataFrame. I'll admit that I don't have a deep understanding of snowpark's innerworkings, but on the surface it seems like all cached results are essentialy a select * from (temp_table_name) which seems generalizable. In pseudo-ish code, it could be something like:

# Module: snowflake.snowpark.dataframe.DataFrame

class DataFrame:
...

    def __del__(self):
        if self.is_cached:
            temp_table = # extract name from self.queries string or some other method
            self._session.sql(f'drop table {temp_table').collect()

How would this improve snowflake-snowpark-python?

Avoid overcharging on storage credits :)

References, Other Background

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 in snowflake.snowpark.dataframe.DataFrame and trace cache_result, explain, and the session query handling to understand how cached temporary tables are tracked. Determine a safe lifecycle for unreferenced cached results, then verify that re-caching does not retain unnecessary temporary tables while still preserving referenced results.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, sql
Domain
databases
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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