Protobuf is an attempt to make ASN.1 more developer friendly (not a bad attempt). It's simpler, has much less features, easier to implement and has a compact encoding. But on other hand it's non-standard, "reinvented wheel" they could just do a "better than PER" encoding for ASN.1, and AFAIK has no support for the new and shiny Google encodings, like "group varint". All in all in current situation it seems a better choice than ASN.1, not even arguing about something even more vague and non-standard as Thrift. On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 12:38 AM, Ryan Rawson wrote: > Thanks for that Ted. > > Correct - internal wire format doesnt mean 'drill only supports > protobuf encoded data'. > > Part of the reason to favor protobuf is that a lot of people in the > broader 'big data' community are building a lot of experience with it. > Hadoop and HBase both are moving to/moved to protobuf on the wire. > Being able to leverage this expertise is valuable. > > There is a JIRA in Hadoop-land where someone had done a deep dive > 'bake off' between thrift, protobuf and avro. The ultimate choice was > protobuf for a number of reasons. If people want to re-do the > analysis, I'd like to see it in the context of THAT analysis (eg: why > the assumptions there are not the same for Drill)... if anything it'd > give a concrete form to what can be a mire. > > For what it's worth, I've had many discussion along these angles with > a variety of people including committers on Thrift, and the consensus > is both are good choices. > > -ryan > > On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Ted Dunning > wrote: > > I think that it is important to ask a few questions leading up a decision > > here. > > > > The first is a (rhetorical) show of hands about how many people believe > > that there are no serious performance or expressivity killers when > > comparing alternative serialization frameworks. As far as I know, > > performance differences are not massive (and protobufs is one of the > > leaders in any case) and the expressivity differences are essentially > nil. > > If somebody feels that there is a serious show-stopper with any option, > > they should speak. > > > > The second is to ask the sense of the community whether they judge > progress > > or perfection in this decision is most important to the project. My > guess > > is that almost everybody would prefer to see progress as long as the > > technical choice is not subject to some horrid missing bit. > > > > The final question is whether it is reasonable to go along with protobufs > > given that several very experienced engineers prefer it and would like to > > produce code based on it. If the first two answers are answered to the > > effect of protobufs is about as good as we will find and that progress > > trumps small differences, then it seems that moving to follow this > > preference of Jason and Ryan for protobufs might be a reasonable thing to > > do. > > > > The question of an internal wire format, btw, does not constrain the > > project relative to external access. I think it is important to support > > JDBC and ODBC and whatever is in common use for querying. For external > > access the question is quite different. Whereas for the internal format > > consensus around a single choice has large benefits, the external format > > choice is nearly the opposite. For an external format, limiting > ourselves > > to a single choice seems like a bad idea and increasing the audience > seems > > like a better choice. > > > > On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 12:44 PM, Ryan Rawson > wrote: > > > >> Hi folks, > >> > >> I just commented on this first JIRA. Here is my text: > >> > >> This issue has been hashed over a lot in the Hadoop projects. There > >> was work done to compare thrift vs avro vs protobuf. The conclusion > >> was protobuf was the decision to use. > >> > >> Prior to this move, there had been a lot of noise about pluggable RPC > >> transports, and whatnot. It held up adoption of a backwards compatible > >> serialization framework for a long time. The problem ended up being > >> the analysis-paralysis, rather than the specific implementation > >> problem. In other words, the problem was a LACK of implementation than > >> actual REAL problems. > >> > >> Based on this experience, I'd strongly suggest adopting protobuf and > >> moving on. Forget about pluggable RPC implementations, the complexity > >> doesnt deliver benefits. The benefits of protobuf is that its the RPC > >> format for Hadoop and HBase, which allows Drill to draw on the broad > >> experience of those communities who need to implement high performance > >> backwards compatible RPC serialization. > >> > >> ==== > >> > >> Expanding a bit, I've looked in to this issue a lot, and there is very > >> few significant concrete reasons to choose protobuf vs thrift. Tiny > >> percent faster of this, and that, etc. I'd strongly suggest protobuf > >> for the expanded community. There is no particular Apache imperative > >> that Apache projects re-use libraries. Use what makes sense for your > >> project. > >> > >> As regards to Avro, it's a fine serialization format for long term > >> data retention, but the complexities that exist to enable that make it > >> non-ideal for an RPC. I know of no one who uses AvroRPC in any form. > >> > >> -ryan > >> > >> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Tomer Shiran > >> wrote: > >> > We plan to propose the architecture and interfaces in the next couple > >> > weeks, which will make it easy to divide the project into clear > building > >> > blocks. At that point it will be easier to start contributing > different > >> > data sources, data formats, operators, query languages, etc. > >> > > >> > The contributions are done in the usual Apache way. It's best to open > a > >> > JIRA and then post a patch so that others can review and then a > committer > >> > can check it in. > >> > > >> > On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:23 PM, Chandan Madhesia < > >> chandanmadhesia@gmail.com > >> >> wrote: > >> > > >> >> Hi > >> >> > >> >> Hi > >> >> > >> >> What is the process to become a contributor to drill ? > >> >> > >> >> Regards > >> >> chandan > >> >> > >> >> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Ted Dunning > >> wrote: > >> >> > >> >> > Suffice it to say that if *you* think it is important enough to > >> implement > >> >> > and maintain, then the group shouldn't say naye. The consensus > stuff > >> >> > should only block things that break something else. Additive > features > >> >> that > >> >> > are highly maintainable (or which come with commitments) shouldn't > >> >> > generally be blocked. > >> >> > > >> >> > On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 9:14 AM, Michael Hausenblas < > >> >> > michael.hausenblas@gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> > > >> >> > > Good. Feel free to put me down for that, if the group as a whole > >> thinks > >> >> > > that (supporting Thrift) makes sense. > >> >> > > > >> >> > > >> >> > >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > -- > >> > Tomer Shiran > >> > Director of Product Management | MapR Technologies | 650-804-8657 > >> >