Hi Zoltan,

Answers below:

> On Nov 30, 2020, at 14:19, Zoltán Borók-Nagy 
> <borokna...@cloudera.com.INVALID> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for the replies. My take for the above questions are as follows
> Should 'iceberg.catalog' be a required property?
> Yeah, I think it would be nice if this would be required to avoid any 
> implicit behavior
Currently we have a Catalogs class to get/initialize/use the different 
Catalogs. At that time the decision was to use HadoopTables as a default 
catalog.
It might be worthwhile to use the same class in Impala as well, so the behavior 
is consistent.
> 'hadoop.catalog' LOCATION and catalog_location
> In Impala we don't allow setting LOCATION for tables stored in 
> 'hadoop.catalog'. But Impala internally sets LOCATION to the Iceberg table's 
> actual location. We were also thinking about using only the table LOCATION, 
> and set it to the catalog location, but we also found it confusing.
It could definitely work, but it is somewhat strange that we have an external 
table location set to an arbitrary path, and we have a different location 
generated by other configs. It would be nice to have the real location set in 
the external table location as well.

I like the flexibility of setting the table_identifier on table level, which 
could help removing naming conflicts. We might want to have this in the Iceberg 
Catalog implementation.
> 'iceberg.table_identifier' for HiveCatalog
> Yeah, it doesn't add much if we only allow using the current HMS. I think it 
> can be only useful if we are allowing external HMSes.
> Moving properties to SERDEPROPERTIES
> I see that these properties are used by the SerDe classes in Hive, but I feel 
> that these properties are just not about serialization and deserialization. 
> And as I see the current SERDEPROPERTIES are things like 'field.delim', 
> 'separatorChar', 'quoteChar', etc. So properties about table loading more 
> naturally belong to TBLPROPERTIES in my opinion.
I have seen it used both ways for HBaseSerDe. (even the wiki page uses both :) 
). Since Impala prefers TBLPROPERTIES and if we start using prefix for 
separating real Iceberg table properties from other properties, then we can 
keep it at TBLPROPERTIES.


> Thanks,
>     Zoltan
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 1:33 PM Peter Vary <pv...@cloudera.com.invalid> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Based on the discussion below I understand we have the following kinds of 
> properties:
> Iceberg table properties - Engine independent, storage related parameters
> "how to get to" - I think these are mostly Hive table specific properties, 
> since for Spark, the Spark catalog configuration serves for the same purpose. 
> I think the best place for storing these would be the Hive SERDEPROPERTIES, 
> as this describes the access information for the SerDe. Sidenote: I think we 
> should decide if we allow HiveCatalogs pointing to a different HMS and the 
> 'iceberg.table_identifier' would make sense only if we allow having multiple 
> catalogs.
> Query specific properties - These are engine specific and might be mapped to 
> / even override the Iceberg table properties on the engine specific code 
> paths, but currently these properties have independent names and mapped on a 
> case-by-case basis. 
> 
> Based on this:
> Shall we move the "how to get to" properties to SERDEPROPERTIES?
> Shall we define a prefix for setting Iceberg table properties from Hive 
> queries and omitting other engine specific properties?
> 
> Thanks,
> Peter
> 
> 
>> On Nov 27, 2020, at 17:45, Mass Dosage <massdos...@gmail.com 
>> <mailto:massdos...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> I like these suggestions, comments inline below on the last round...
>> 
>> On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 at 09:45, Zoltán Borók-Nagy <borokna...@apache.org 
>> <mailto:borokna...@apache.org>> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> The above aligns with what we did in Impala, i.e. we store information about 
>> table loading in HMS table properties. We are just a bit more explicit about 
>> which catalog to use.
>> We have table property 'iceberg.catalog' to determine the catalog type, 
>> right now the supported values are 'hadoop.tables', 'hadoop.catalog', and 
>> 'hive.catalog'. Additional table properties can be set based on the catalog 
>> type.
>> 
>> So, if the value of 'iceberg.catalog' is
>> 
>> I'm all for renaming this, having "mr" in the property name is confusing.
>>  
>> hadoop.tables
>> the table location is used to load the table
>> The only question I have is should we have this as the default? i.e. if you 
>> don't set a catalog it will assume its HadoopTables and use the location? Or 
>> should we require this property to be here to be consistent and avoid any 
>> "magic"?
>>  
>> hadoop.catalog
>> Required table property 'iceberg.catalog_location' specifies the location of 
>> the hadoop catalog in the file system
>> Optional table property 'iceberg.table_identifier' specifies the table id. 
>> If it's not set, then <database_name>.<table_name> is used as table 
>> identifier
>> I like this as it would allow you to use a different database and table name 
>> in Hive as opposed to the Hadoop Catalog - at the moment they have to match. 
>> The only thing here is that I think Hive requires a table LOCATION to be set 
>> and it's then confusing as there are now two locations on the table. I'm not 
>> sure whether in the Hive storage handler or SerDe etc. we can get Hive to 
>> not require that and maybe even disallow it from being set. That would 
>> probably be best in conjunction with this. Another solution would be to not 
>> have the 'iceberg.catalog_location' property but instead use the table 
>> LOCATION for this but that's a bit confusing from a Hive point of view.
>> 
>> hive.catalog
>> Optional table property 'iceberg.table_identifier' specifies the table id. 
>> If it's not set, then <database_name>.<table_name> is used as table 
>> identifier
>> We have the assumption that the current Hive metastore stores the table, 
>> i.e. we don't support external Hive metastores currently
>> These sound fine for Hive catalog tables that are created outside of the 
>> automatic Hive table creation (see https://iceberg.apache.org/hive/ 
>> <https://iceberg.apache.org/hive/> -> Using Hive Catalog) we'd just need to 
>> document how you can create these yourself and that one could use a 
>> different Hive database and table etc.
>>  
>> Independent of catalog implementations, but we also have table property 
>> 'iceberg.file_format' to specify the file format for the data files.
>> 
>> OK, I don't think we need that for Hive?
>>  
>> We haven't released it yet, so we are open to changes, but I think these 
>> properties are reasonable and it would be great if we could standardize the 
>> properties across engines that use HMS as the primary metastore of tables.
>> 
>> 
>> If others agree I think we should create an issue where we document the 
>> above changes so it's very clear what we're doing and can then go an 
>> implement them and update the docs etc.
>>  
>> Cheers,
>>     Zoltan
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 2:20 AM Ryan Blue <rb...@netflix.com.invalid 
>> <mailto:rb...@netflix.com.invalid>> wrote:
>> Yes, I think that is a good summary of the principles.
>> 
>> #4 is correct because we provide some information that is informational 
>> (Hive schema) or tracked only by the metastore (best-effort current user). I 
>> also agree that it would be good to have a table identifier in HMS table 
>> metadata when loading from an external table. That gives us a way to handle 
>> name conflicts.
>> 
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 5:14 PM Jacques Nadeau <jacq...@dremio.com 
>> <mailto:jacq...@dremio.com>> wrote:
>> Minor error, my last example should have been:
>> 
>> db1.table1_etl_branch => nessie.folder1.folder2.folder3.table1@etl_branch
>> 
>> --
>> Jacques Nadeau
>> CTO and Co-Founder, Dremio
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 4:56 PM Jacques Nadeau <jacq...@dremio.com 
>> <mailto:jacq...@dremio.com>> wrote:
>> I agree with Ryan on the core principles here. As I understand them:
>> Iceberg metadata describes all properties of a table
>> Hive table properties describe "how to get to" Iceberg metadata (which 
>> catalog + possibly ptr, path, token, etc)
>> There could be default "how to get to" information set at a global level
>> Best-effort schema should stored be in the table properties in HMS. This 
>> should be done for information schema retrieval purposes within Hive but 
>> should be ignored during Hive/other tool execution.
>> Is that a fair summary of your statements Ryan (except 4, which I just 
>> added)?
>> 
>> One comment I have on #2 is that for different catalogs and use cases, I 
>> think it can be somewhat more complex where it would be desirable for a 
>> table that initially existed without Hive that was later exposed in Hive to 
>> support a ptr/path/token for how the table is named externally. For example, 
>> in a Nessie context we support arbitrary paths for an Iceberg table (such as 
>> folder1.folder2.folder3.table1). If you then want to expose that table to 
>> Hive, you might have this mapping for #2
>> 
>> db1.table1 => nessie:folder1.folder2.folder3.table1
>> 
>> Similarly, you might want to expose a particular branch version of a table. 
>> So it might say:
>> 
>> db1.table1_etl_branch => nessie.folder1@etl_branch
>> 
>> Just saying that the address to the table in the catalog could itself have 
>> several properties. The key being that no matter what those are, we should 
>> follow #1 and only store properties that are about the ptr, not the 
>> content/metadata.
>> 
>> Lastly, I believe #4 is the case but haven't tested it. Can someone confirm 
>> that it is true? And that it is possible/not problematic?
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Jacques Nadeau
>> CTO and Co-Founder, Dremio
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 4:28 PM Ryan Blue <rb...@netflix.com.invalid 
>> <mailto:rb...@netflix.com.invalid>> wrote:
>> Thanks for working on this, Laszlo. I’ve been thinking about these problems 
>> as well, so this is a good time to have a discussion about Hive config.
>> 
>> I think that Hive configuration should work mostly like other engines, where 
>> different configurations are used for different purposes. Different purposes 
>> means that there is not a global configuration priority. Hopefully, I can 
>> explain how we use the different config sources elsewhere to clarify.
>> 
>> Let’s take Spark as an example. Spark uses Hadoop, so it has a Hadoop 
>> Configuration, but it also has its own global configuration. There are also 
>> Iceberg table properties, and all of the various Hive properties if you’re 
>> tracking tables with a Hive MetaStore.
>> 
>> The first step is to simplify where we can, so we effectively eliminate 2 
>> sources of config:
>> 
>> The Hadoop Configuration is only used to instantiate Hadoop classes, like 
>> FileSystem. Iceberg should not use it for any other config.
>> Config in the Hive MetaStore is only used to identify that a table is 
>> Iceberg and point to its metadata location. All other config in HMS is 
>> informational. For example, the input format is FileInputFormat so that 
>> non-Iceberg readers cannot actually instantiate the format (it’s abstract) 
>> but it is available so they also don’t fail trying to load the class. 
>> Table-specific config should not be stored in table or serde properties.
>> That leaves Spark configuration and Iceberg table configuration.
>> 
>> Iceberg differs from other tables because it is opinionated: data 
>> configuration should be maintained at the table level. This is cleaner for 
>> users because config is standardized across engines and in one place. And it 
>> also enables services that analyze a table and update its configuration to 
>> tune options that users almost never do, like row group or stripe size in 
>> the columnar formats. Iceberg table configuration is used to configure 
>> table-specific concerns and behavior.
>> 
>> Spark configuration is used for engine-specific concerns, and runtime 
>> overrides. A good example of an engine-specific concern is the catalogs that 
>> are available to load Iceberg tables. Spark has a way to load and configure 
>> catalog implementations and Iceberg uses that for all catalog-level config. 
>> Runtime overrides are things like target split size. Iceberg has a 
>> table-level default split size in table properties, but this can be 
>> overridden by a Spark option for each table, as well as an option passed to 
>> the individual read. Note that these necessarily have different config names 
>> for how they are used: Iceberg uses read.split.target-size and the 
>> read-specific option is target-size.
>> 
>> Applying this to Hive is a little strange for a couple reasons. First, 
>> Hive’s engine configuration is a Hadoop Configuration. As a result, I think 
>> the right place to store engine-specific config is there, including Iceberg 
>> catalogs using a strategy similar to what Spark does: what external Iceberg 
>> catalogs are available and their configuration should come from the HiveConf.
>> 
>> The second way Hive is strange is that Hive needs to use its own MetaStore 
>> to track Hive table concerns. The MetaStore may have tables created by an 
>> Iceberg HiveCatalog, and Hive also needs to be able to load tables from 
>> other Iceberg catalogs by creating table entries for them.
>> 
>> Here’s how I think Hive should work:
>> 
>> There should be a default HiveCatalog that uses the current MetaStore URI to 
>> be used for HiveCatalog tables tracked in the MetaStore
>> Other catalogs should be defined in HiveConf
>> HMS table properties should be used to determine how to load a table: using 
>> a Hadoop location, using the default metastore catalog, or using an external 
>> Iceberg catalog
>> If there is a metadata_location, then use the HiveCatalog for this metastore 
>> (where it is tracked)
>> If there is a catalog property, then load that catalog and use it to load 
>> the table identifier, or maybe an identifier from HMS table properties
>> If there is no catalog or metadata_location, then use HadoopTables to load 
>> the table location as an Iceberg table
>> This would make it possible to access all types of Iceberg tables in the 
>> same query, and would match how Spark and Flink configure catalogs. Other 
>> than the configuration above, I don’t think that config in HMS should be 
>> used at all, like how the other engines work. Iceberg is the source of truth 
>> for table metadata, HMS stores how to load the Iceberg table, and HiveConf 
>> defines the catalogs (or runtime overrides).
>> 
>> This isn’t quite how configuration works right now. Currently, the catalog 
>> is controlled by a HiveConf property, iceberg.mr.catalog. If that isn’t set, 
>> HadoopTables will be used to load table locations. If it is set, then that 
>> catalog will be used to load all tables by name. This makes it impossible to 
>> load tables from different catalogs at the same time. That’s why I think the 
>> Iceberg catalog for a table should be stored in HMS table properties.
>> 
>> I should also explain iceberg.hive.engine.enabled flag, but I think this is 
>> long enough for now.
>> 
>> rb
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 1:41 AM Laszlo Pinter <lpin...@cloudera.com.invalid 
>> <mailto:lpin...@cloudera.com.invalid>> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>> 
>> I would like to start a discussion, how should we handle properties from 
>> various sources like Iceberg, Hive or global configuration. I've put 
>> together a short document 
>> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyD7mGp_hh0dx9N_Ax9kj5INkg7Wzpj9XQ5t2-7AwNs/edit?usp=sharing>,
>>  please have a look and let me know what you think.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Laszlo
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Ryan Blue
>> Software Engineer
>> Netflix
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Ryan Blue
>> Software Engineer
>> Netflix
> 

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