Ballista Python Bindings (PyBallista)

This is a Python library that binds to Apache Arrow distributed query engine Ballista.

Status

What works?

• Start Ballista schedulers and executors from Python
• Execute distributed SQL queries (with DataFusion backend)
• Use DataFrame API to read files and execute distributed queries (with DataFusion backend)
• Support for CSV, Parquet, and Avro formats

What does not work?

• Python UDFs
• JSON

Roadmap

• Support reading JSON
• Support distributed Python UDFs and UDAFs
• Support distributed query execution against Python DataFrame libraries such as Polars, Pandas, and cuDF, that are already supported by DataFusion's Python bindings (this will require new features in Ballista)

Examples

• Query a Parquet file using SQL
• Query a Parquet file using DataFrame API
• Start a scheduler from within a Python process
• Start an executor from within a Python process

How to install (from pip)

pip install ballista
# or
python -m pip install ballista

How to develop

This assumes that you have rust and cargo installed. We use the workflow recommended by pyo3 and maturin.

Bootstrap:

# fetch this repo
git clone git@github.com:apache/arrow-ballista-python.git
# change to python directory
cd arrow-ballista-python
# prepare development environment (used to build wheel / install in development)
python3 -m venv venv
# activate the venv
source venv/bin/activate
# update pip itself if necessary
python -m pip install -U pip
# if python -V gives python 3.7
python -m pip install -r requirements-37.txt
# if python -V gives python 3.8/3.9/3.10
python -m pip install -r requirements-310.txt

Whenever rust code changes (your changes or via git pull):

# make sure you activate the venv using "source venv/bin/activate" first
maturin develop
python -m pytest

How to update dependencies

To change test dependencies, change the requirements.in and run

# install pip-tools (this can be done only once), also consider running in venv
python -m pip install pip-tools

# change requirements.in and then run
python -m piptools compile --generate-hashes -o requirements-37.txt
# or run this is you are on python 3.8/3.9/3.10
python -m piptools compile --generate-hashes -o requirements.txt

To update dependencies, run with -U

python -m piptools compile -U --generate-hashes -o requirements-310.txt

More details here