Cassandra - "Batch is too large" exception - cassandra

We are using Cassandra batch statement to persist data. We are getting "Batch too large" exception.
I understand that data in batch size is exceeding the batch size fail threshold.
I need help in calculating the size of the batch. Is there any way we can find out what is the exact size of data passed in batch?

There isn't a simple way for an end-user to calculate the size of a batch because it's based on the serialised size of all the mutations in the batch.
A complicating matter is that batch mutations could be any combination of INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE of any combination of columns, row or partition.
As a side note in case you're not already aware, CQL batches are not an optimisation compared to use of batches in RDBMS as I've discussed in https://community.datastax.com/questions/5246/. CQL batches should only be used to keep related partitions in sync across denormalised tables as I've explained in https://community.datastax.com/articles/2744/. Cheers!

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Spark 2.4.6 + JDBC Reader: When predicate pushdown set to false, is data read in parallel by spark from the engine?

I am trying to extract data from a big table in SAP HANA, which is around 1.5tb in size, and the best way is to run in parallel across nodes and threads. Spark JDBC is the perfect candidate for the task, but in order to actually extract in parallel it requires partition column, lower/upper bound and number of partitions option to be set. To make the operation of the extraction easier, I considered adding an added partition column which would be the row_number() function and use MIN(), MAX() as lower/upper bounds respectively. And then the operations team just would be required to provide the number of partitions to have.
The problem is that HANA runs out of memory and it is very likely that row_number() is too costly on the engine. I can only imagine that over 100 threads run the same query during every fetch to apply the where filters and retrieve the corresponding chunk.
So my question is, if I disable the predicate pushdown option, how does spark behave? is it only read by one executor and then the filters are applied on spark side? Or does it do some magic to split the fetching part from the DB?
What could you suggest for extracting such a big table using the available JDBC reader?
Thanks in advance.
Before executing your primary query from Spark, run pre-ingestion query to fetch the size of the Dataset being loaded, i.e. as you have mentioned Min(), Max() etc.
Expecting that the data is uniformly distributed between Min and Max keys, you can partition across executors in Spark by providing Min/Max/Number of Executors.
You don't need(want) to change your primary datasource by adding additional columns to support data ingestion in this case.

Mysql or Spark Processing of 400gb data

If I use spark in my case, based on block and cores will it be useful ?
I have 400 GB of data in single table i.e. User_events with multiple columns in MySQL. This table stores all user events from application. Indexes are there on required columns. I have an user interface where user can try different permutation and combination of fields under user_events
Currently I am facing the performance issues where query either takes 15/20 seconds or even longer or times out.
I have gone through couple of Spark tutorial but I am not sure if it can help here. Per mine understanding from spark,
First Spark has to bring all the data in memory. Bring 100 M record on netwok will be costly operation and I will be needing big memory for the
same. Isn't it ?
Once data in memory, Spark can distribute the data among partition based on cores and input data size. Then it can filter the data on each partition
in parallel. Here Spark can be beneficial as it can do the parallel operation while MySQL will be sequential. Is that correct ?
Is my understanding correct ?

Spark dataset exceeds total ram size

I am recently working in spark and came across few queries which I still couldn't resolve.
Let's say i have a dataset of 100GB and my ram size of the cluster is
16 GB.
Now, I know in case of simply reading the file and saving it in the HDFS will work as Spark will do it for each partition. What will happen when I perform sorting or aggregation transformation on 100GB data? How will it process 100GB in memory since we need entire data in case of sorting?
I have gone through below link but this only tells us what spark do in case of persisting, what I am looking is Spark aggregations or sorting on dataset greater than ram size.
Spark RDD - is partition(s) always in RAM?
Any help is appreciated.
There are 2 things you might want to know.
Once Spark reaches the memory limit, it will start spilling data to
disk. Please check this Spark faq and also there are severals
question from SO talking about the same, for example, this one.
There is an algorihtm called external sort that allows you to sort datasets which do not fit in memory. Essentially, you divide the large dataset by chunks which actually fit in memory, sort each chunk and write each chunk to disk. Finally, merge every sorted chunk in order to get the whole dataset sorted. Spark supports external sorting as you can see here and here is the implementation.
Answering your question, you do not really need that your data fit in memory in order to sort it, as I explained to you before. Now, I would encourage you to think about an algorithm for data aggregation dividing the data by chunks, just like external sort does.
There are multiple things you need to consider. Because you have 16RAM and 100GB data set, it will be good idea to keep persistence in DISK. It maybe difficult as when aggregating if data set has high cardinality. If the cardinality is low you will be better of to do aggregate at each RDD before merging into whole dataset. Also remember to make sure that each partition in RDD is less than memory (default value 0.4*container_size)

Cassandra Batch statement-Multiple tables

I want to use batch statement to delete a row from 3 tables in my database to ensure atomicity. The partition key is going to be the same in all the 3 tables. In all the examples that I read about batch statements, all the queries were for a single table? In my case, is it a good idea to use batch statements? Or, should I avoid it?
I'm using Cassandra-3.11.2 and I execute my queries using the C++ driver.
Yes, you can use batch to ensure atomicity. Single partition batches are faster (same table and same partition key) but only for a limited number of partitions (in your case three) it is okay. But don't use it for performance optimization (Ex: reduce of multiple requests). If you need atomicity you can use it.
You can check below links:
Cassandra batch query performance on tables having different partition keys
Cassandra batch query vs single insert performance
How single parition batch in cassandra function for multiple column update?
EDITED
In my case, the tables are different but the partition key is the same in all 3 tables. So is this a special case of single partition batch or is it something entirely different.
For different tables partitions are also different. So this is a multi partition batch. LOGGED batches are used to ensure atomicity for different partitions (different tables or different partition keys). UNLOGGED batches are used to ensure atomicity and isolation for single partition batch. If you use UNLOGGED batch for multi partition batch atomicity will not be ensured. Default is LOGGED batch. For single partition batch default is UNLOGGED. Cause single partition batch is considered as single row mutation. For single row update, there is no need of using LOGGED batch. To know about LOGGED or UNLOGGED batch, I have shared a link below.
Multi partition batches should only be used to achieve atomicity for a few writes on different tables. Apart from this they should be avoided because they’re too expensive.
Single partition batches can be used to achieve atomicity and isolation. They’re not much more expensive than normal writes.
But you can use multi partition LOGGED batch as partitions are limited.
A very useful Doc in Batch and all the details are provided. If you read this, all the confusions will be cleared.
Cassandra - to BATCH or not to BATCH
Partition Key tokens vs row partition
Table partitions and partition key tokens are different. Partition key is used to decide which node the data resides. For same row key partition tokens are same thus resides in the same node. For different partition key or same key different tables they are different row mutation. You cannot get data with one query for different partition keys or from different tables even if for the same key. Coordinator nodes have to treat it as different request or mutation and request the actual data from replicated nodes separately. It's the internal structure of how C* stores data.
Every table even has it's own directory structure making it clear that a partition from one table will never interact with the partition of another.
Does the same partition key in different cassandra tables add up to cell theoretical limit?
To know details how C* maps data check this link:
Understanding How CQL3 Maps to Cassandra's Internal Data Structure
Yes, this is a good use-case for BATCH according to the Cassandra documentation.
See the "Note:" on https://docs.datastax.com/en/dse/6.0/cql/cql/cql_using/useBatchGoodExample.html
If there are two different tables in the same keyspace and the two tables have the same partition key, this scenario is considered a single partition batch. There will be a single mutation for each table. This happens because the two tables could have different columns, even though the keyspace and partition are the same. Batches allow a caller to bundle multiple operations into a single batch request. All the operations are performed by the same coordinator. The best use of a batch request is for a single partition in multiple tables in the same keyspace. Also, batches provide a guarantee that mutations will be applied in a particular order.
Specifically, if they have the same partition key, this will be considered a single-partition batch. Hence: "The best use of a batch request is for a single partition in multiple tables in the same keyspace."

Spark Broadcasting Alternatives

Our application uses a long-running spark context(just like spark RPEL) to enable users perform tasks online. We use spark broadcasts heavily to process dimensional data. As in common practice, we broadcast the dimension tables and use dataframe APIs to join the fact table with the other dimension tables. One of the dimension tables is quite big and has about 100k records and 15MB of size in-memory(kyro serialized is just few MBs lesser).
We see that every spark JOB on the de-normalized dataframe is causing all the dimensions to be broadcasted over and over again. The bigger table takes ~7 secs every time it is broadcasted. We are trying to find a way to have the dimension tables broadcasted only once per context life span. We tried both sqlcontext and sparkcontext broadcasting.
Are there any other alternatives to spark broadcasting? Or is there a way to reduce the memory footprint of the dataframe(compression/serialization etc. - post-kyro is still 15MB :( ) ?
Possible Alternative
We use Iginite spark integration to load large amount of data at start of job and keep on mutating as needed.
In embedded mode you can start ignite at boot of Spark context and kill in the end.
You can read more about it here.
https://ignite.apache.org/features/igniterdd.html
Finally we were able to find a stopgap solution until spark support pinning of RDDs or preferably RDDs in a later version. This is apparently not addressed even in v2.1.0.
The solution relies on RDD mapPartitions, below is a brief summary of the approach
Collect the dimension table records as map of key-value pairs and broadcast using spark context. You can possibly use RDD.keyBy
Map fact rows using RDD mapPartitions method.
For each fact row mapParitions
collect the dimension ids in the fact row and lookup the dimension records
yields a new fact row by denormalizing the dimension ids in the fact
table

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