Xuefu Zhang created HIVE-5356:
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             Summary: Move arithmatic UDFs to generic UDF implementations
                 Key: HIVE-5356
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-5356
             Project: Hive
          Issue Type: Task
          Components: UDF
    Affects Versions: 0.11.0
            Reporter: Xuefu Zhang
            Assignee: Xuefu Zhang
             Fix For: 0.13.0


Currently, all of the arithmetic operators, such as add/sub/mult/div, are 
implemented as old-style UDFs and java reflection is used to determine the 
return type TypeInfos/ObjectInspectors, based on the return type of the 
evaluate() method chosen for the expression. This works fine for types that 
don't have type params.

Hive decimal type participates in these operations just like int or double. 
Different from double or int, however, decimal has precision and scale, which 
cannot be determined by just looking at the return type (decimal) of the UDF 
evaluate() method, even though the operands have certain precision/scale. With 
the default of "decimal" without precision/scale, then (10, 0) will be the type 
params. This is certainly not desirable.

To solve this problem, all of the arithmetic operators would need to be 
implemented as GenericUDFs, which allow returning ObjectInspector during the 
initialize() method. The object inspectors returned can carry type params, from 
which the "exact" return type can be determined.

It's worth mentioning that, for user UDF implemented in non-generic way, if the 
return type of the chosen evaluate() method is decimal, the return type 
actually has (10,0) as precision/scale, which might not be desirable. This 
needs to be documented.

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