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Add variant_experimental feature to parquet crate #8133

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@alamb alamb commented Aug 13, 2025

Which issue does this PR close?

Rationale for this change

TLDR is we need a way to test and work out how Variant integration with the actual parquet reader/writer will look, so let's do it in the parquet crate.

Please see the essay on #8132 for background

Follow on tasks (I will file tickets for these items if we agree on this as an integration mechanism):

  • Do not panic when writing VariantArray with the ArrowWriter
  • Add some way to write the logical annotation to parquet metadata
  • Read arrays annotated with VARIANT logical type as VariantArrays in ArrowReader
  • Update the variant_integration test to use VariantArray
  • Rename variant_experimental flag to variant and remove warnings about being experimental

Follow up tasks that came out of this PR but do not depend on it

What changes are included in this PR?

  1. Add the variant_experimental feature to the parquet crate
  2. Publicly export the variant crates
  3. Add docs and examples

Are these changes tested?

Yes by new CI

Are there any user-facing changes?

This adds a new feature flag, and new

@github-actions github-actions bot added parquet Changes to the parquet crate parquet-variant parquet-variant* crates labels Aug 13, 2025
@alamb alamb changed the title Add variant feature to parquet crate Path Finding: Add variant feature to parquet crate Aug 14, 2025
@alamb alamb force-pushed the alamb/variant-feature branch from ed04fb5 to 7ab46a1 Compare August 14, 2025 18:27
@alamb alamb changed the title Path Finding: Add variant feature to parquet crate Path Finding: Add variant_experimental feature to parquet crate Aug 14, 2025
@alamb alamb changed the title Path Finding: Add variant_experimental feature to parquet crate Add variant_experimental feature to parquet crate Aug 14, 2025
@alamb alamb marked this pull request as ready for review August 14, 2025 18:46
@alamb alamb marked this pull request as draft August 14, 2025 18:47
@alamb alamb force-pushed the alamb/variant-feature branch from 7ab46a1 to 0ec7656 Compare August 14, 2025 18:48
@github-actions github-actions bot removed the parquet-variant parquet-variant* crates label Aug 14, 2025
@alamb alamb force-pushed the alamb/variant-feature branch from 0ec7656 to be5cf31 Compare August 14, 2025 18:52
//! [`VariantArray`]: compute::VariantArray
//! [`variant_get`]: compute::variant_get
//!
//! # Example: Writing a Parquet file with Variant column
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Being able to write this example is the largest rationale in my mind for the feature flag in the parquet crate

//! variant_builder.finish();
//! let array = builder.build();
//!
//! // TODO support writing VariantArray directly
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I will file a follow on ticket for this problem

//! let batch = RecordBatch::try_from_iter(vec![("data", array)])?;
//!
//! // write the RecordBatch to a Parquet file
//! let file = std::fs::File::create("variant-json.parquet")?;
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This is kind of neat to see the data written. I looked at the resulting file using datafusion-cli and it looks like like this (note it does not have the parquet logical annotation on it)

> select * from 'parquet/variant-json.parquet';
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| data                                                                                                                              |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| {metadata: 11020003076167656e616d65, value: 020200010002080c1e15416c696365}                                                       |
| {metadata: 010400040b0e1263697479616464726573736167656e616d65, value: 0203010203000e10140201000009214e657720596f726b0c190d426f62} |
| {metadata: 010000, value: 020000}                                                                                                 |
| {metadata: 010000, value: 020000}                                                                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
4 row(s) fetched.
Elapsed 0.003 seconds.

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alamb commented Aug 14, 2025

I would like to know if there are any objections to this approach from other maintainers such as @Dandandan @etseidl @waynexia @tustvold and @mbrobbel

Also, other Variant contributors like @carpecodeum @scovich @mprammer @klion26 @friendlymatthew please provide any feedback if you have it

@etseidl
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etseidl commented Aug 14, 2025

No objections from me.

@friendlymatthew
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Very exciting. Thank you!

@klion26
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klion26 commented Aug 15, 2025

Thank you for pushing this forward!

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[Variant] Add variant feature to parquet crate
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