Data Accessing

Vineyard is designed to support distributed object sharing and offers both IPCClient and RPCClient for efficient data access. This section will guide you through various methods of accessing objects within vineyard. For more information on vineyard object basics, please refer to Object = metadata + payloads and Distributed objects.

IPCClient vs. RPCClient

As depicted in the above figure, data is partitioned across different vineyard instances. The concept of zero-copy sharing was explained in Architecture. Memory mapping is only available for clients on the same instance, while metadata is globally synchronized and accessible from clients connected to instances on other hosts.

Vineyard provides two clients to support IPC and RPC scenarios:

  • IPC Client

    • Can only connect to instances deployed on the same host.

    • Offers full support for local data access. Accessing local blobs is enabled by zero-copy memory mapping.

  • RPC Client

    • Can connect to any instance with an enabled RPC endpoint.

    • Provides limited support for remote data access. Creating and fetching remote blobs incurs considerable network transfer overhead.

Local vs. Remote

Distributed shared objects are typically partitioned, with each vineyard instance managing some chunks of the entire object. As shown in Distributed objects, a GlobalTensor is partitioned into three chunks, and each instance holds one chunk of type Tensor.

From the perspective of computing engines, distributed computing engines launch workers on vineyard instances. Each worker connects to the co-located local instance and is responsible for processing chunks in that local instance. For example, when starting a Dask cluster on a vineyard cluster as illustrated in the picture above, each Dask worker is responsible for executing computations on its local chunks. Some computing tasks require communication between workers, such as aggregation. In these cases, the communication is performed by the computing engine itself (in this case, the Dask cluster).

Tip

We assume that the computing engines built upon vineyard are responsible for scheduling tasks based on their awareness of the underlying data partitioning within the vineyard cluster.

This design is well-suited for commonly-used modern computing engines,such as GraphScope, Spark, Presto, Dask, Mars, and Ray.

Local Objects

Creating and accessing local objects in vineyard can be easily achieved using put and get methods (see vineyard.IPCClient.put() and vineyard.IPCClient.get()).

Effortlessly create and access local objects using put and get
 >>> import pandas as pd
 >>> import vineyard
 >>> import numpy as np
 >>>
 >>> vineyard_ipc_client = vineyard.connect("/tmp/vineyard.sock")
 >>>
 >>> df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10, 2))
 >>>
 >>> # put object into vineyard
 >>> r = vineyard_ipc_client.put(df)
 >>> r, type(r)
 (o00053008257020f8, vineyard._C.ObjectID)
 >>>
 >>> # get object from vineyard using object id
 >>> data = vineyard_ipc_client.get(r)
 >>> data
           0         1
 0  0.534487  0.261941
 1  0.901056  0.441583
 2  0.687568  0.671564
 ...

Vineyard provides low-level APIs to operate on metadatas and raw blobs as well.

Accessing metadatas

The method vineyard.IPCClient.get_meta() can be used to inspect metadata in the vineyard cluster, which returns a vineyard.ObjectMeta value:

Accessing metadata in vineyard
 >>> meta = vineyard_ipc_client.get_meta(r)
 >>> meta.id
 o00053008257020f8
 >>> meta.instance_id
 0
 >>> meta.typename
 'vineyard::DataFrame'
 >>> meta
 {
     "instance_id": 0,
     "nbytes": 0,
     "signature": 1460186430481176,
     "transient": true,
     "typename": "vineyard::DataFrame"
     "__values_-value-0": {
         "global": false,
         "id": "o0005300822f54d1c",
         "instance_id": 0,
         "nbytes": 80,
         "order_": "\"F\"",
         "shape_": "[10]",
         "signature": 1460186388165810,
         "transient": true,
         "typename": "vineyard::Tensor<double>",
         "value_type_": "float64",
         "value_type_meta_": "<f8"
         "buffer_": {
             "id": "o8005300822d858df",
             "typename": "vineyard::Blob"
             ...

Using blobs

Vineyard offers low-level APIs for creating and accessing local blobs with enhanced efficiency:

Creating local blobs
 >>> import vineyard
 >>> vineyard_ipc_client = vineyard.connect("/tmp/vineyard.sock")
 >>>
 >>> # mock a data
 >>> payload = b'abcdefgh1234567890uvwxyz'
 >>>
 >>> # create a blob builder
 >>> buffer_builder = vineyard_ipc_client.create_blob(len(payload))
 >>>
 >>> # copy the mocked data into the builder
 >>> buffer_builder.copy(0, payload)
 >>>
 >>> # seal the builder then we will get a blob
 >>> blob = buffer_builder.seal(vineyard_ipc_client)
Accessing local blobs
 >>> # get the blob from vineyard using object id
 >>> blob = vineyard_ipc_client.get_blob(blob.id)
 >>> blob, type(blob)
 (Object <"o800532e4ab1f2087": vineyard::Blob>, vineyard._C.Blob)
 >>>
 >>> # inspect the value
 >>> bytes(memoryview(blob))
 b'abcdefgh1234567890uvwxyz'

Remote Objects

Creating and accessing remote objects in vineyard can be easily achieved using put and get methods (see vineyard.RPCClient.put() and vineyard.RPCClient.get()).

Effortlessly create and access remote objects using put and get
 >>> import pandas as pd
 >>> import vineyard
 >>> import numpy as np
 >>>
 >>> vineyard_rpc_client = vineyard.connect("localhost", 9600)
 >>>
 >>> df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10, 2))
 >>>
 >>> # put object into vineyard
 >>> r = vineyard_rpc_client.put(df)
 >>> r, type(r)
 (o000a45730a85f8fe, vineyard._C.ObjectID)
 >>>
 >>> # get object from vineyard using object id
 >>> data = vineyard_rpc_client.get(r)
 >>> data
           0         1
 0  0.884227  0.576031
 1  0.863040  0.069815
 2  0.297906  0.911874
 ...

The RPC client enables inspection of remote object metadata and facilitates operations on blobs within the remote cluster, while taking into account the associated network transfer costs.

Inspecting metadata

The method vineyard.RPCClient.get_meta() allows you to access object metadata in a similar manner to vineyard.IPCClient.get_meta(), but with the added capability of connecting to a remote instance.

Metadata accessing using RPCClient
 >>> import vineyard
 >>> vineyard_rpc_client = vineyard.connect("localhost", 9600)
 >>>
 >>> # the `r` from the above "Local Objects" section
 >>> meta = vineyard_rpc_client.get_meta(r)
 >>> meta.id
 o00053008257020f8
 >>> meta.instance_id
 0
 >>> meta.typename
 'vineyard::DataFrame'

Using remote blobs

However, due to the absence of memory sharing between hosts, zero-copy data sharing is not feasible when connecting to a vineyard instance that is not deployed on the same host as the client. Transferring data over the network incurs significant costs, and vineyard requires users to explicitly issue a migrate command to move data from the remote instance to the local instance. For more details, please refer to Object Migration in Vineyard.

For added convenience, we also provide APIs to fetch remote blobs to the local client by transferring payloads over the network.

Warning

Note that the remote in the above APIs means the blob will be transferred using TCP network. For large blobs, it implies a significant cost of time.

Creating remote blobs
 >>> import vineyard
 >>> vineyard_rpc_client = vineyard.connect("localhost", 9600)
 >>>
 >>> # mock a data
 >>> payload = b'abcdefgh1234567890uvwxyz'
 >>>
 >>> # create an empty blob builder
 >>> remote_buffer_builder = vineyard.RemoteBlobBuilder(len(payload))
 >>>
 >>> # copy the mocked data into the builder
 >>> remote_buffer_builder.copy(0, payload)
 >>>
 >>> # create the remote blob using the RPCClient, with the `remote_buffer_builder` as argument
 >>> remote_blob_meta = vineyard_rpc_client.create_remote_blob(remote_buffer_builder)
Accessing remote blobs
 >>> # get the remote blob from vineyard using object id
 >>> remote_blob = vineyard_rpc_client.get_remote_blob(remote_blob_meta.id)
 >>> remote_blob, type(remote_blob)
 (<vineyard._C.RemoteBlob at 0x142204870>, vineyard._C.RemoteBlob)
 >>>
 >>> # inspect the value of remote blob
 >>> bytes(memoryview(remote_blob))
 b'abcdefgh1234567890uvwxyz'

Warning

The APIs for creating blobs in vineyard.IPCClient and vineyard.RPCClient have subtle differences. The vineyard.IPCClient.create_blob() method first allocates a shared memory buffer to create an empty blob builder, allowing the user to fill the buffer and then seal it. In contrast, the vineyard.RPCClient.create_remote_blob() method creates a remote blob builder on-the-fly, enabling the user to fill the buffer and subsequently use the client API to send the remote_buffer_builder to the remote instance.

Utilizing Distributed Objects

In the illustration at the beginning of this section, we demonstrate that vineyard is capable of sharing distributed objects partitioned across multiple hosts. Accessing these distributed objects in vineyard can be achieved through two distinct approaches:

  • Inspecting metadata of global.

    The metadata of global objects can be examined using the vineyard.RPCClient. This allows computing engines to understand the distribution of partitions of global tensors using the RPCClient, and subsequently schedule jobs over those chunks based on the distribution information.

    Mars employs this method to consume distributed tensors and dataframes in vineyard.

    Additionally, by leveraging the metadata of global objects and the server metadata accessible via vineyard.Client.meta(), multiple RPC clients can connect to retrieve the corresponding blobs from different nodes. These blobs are then assembled locally into a single object. This approach is also the default method for vineyard.client.

  • Accessing local partitions of global objects using the IPCClient:

    Another prevalent pattern for accessing shared global objects involves launching a worker on each instance where the global object is partitioned. Then, using the vineyard.IPCClient, workers can obtain the local partitions of the global object. Each worker is responsible for processing its local partitions.

    This pattern is commonly utilized in many computing engines that have been integrated with vineyard, such as GraphScope and Presto.