[ARROW-1047] [Java] Add generalized stream writer and reader interfaces that are decoupled from IO / message framing

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.8.0
• Component/s: Java
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/16639
• Assignee: Bryan Cutler
• Reporter: Wes McKinney
• Created: 17/May/17 19:18
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 07:12
• Resolved: 22/Nov/17 18:47

Description

cc julienledem elahrvivaz nongli

The ArrowWriter https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/master/java/vector/src/main/java/org/apache/arrow/vector/file/ArrowWriter.java accepts a WriteableByteChannel where the stream is written

It would be useful to be able to support other kinds of message framing and transport, like GRPC or HTTP. So rather than writing a complete Arrow stream as a single contiguous byte stream, the component messages (schema, dictionaries, and record batches) would be framed as separate messages in the underlying protocol.

So if we were using ProtocolBuffers and gRPC as the underlying transport for the stream, we could encapsulate components of an Arrow stream in objects like:

message ArrowMessagePB {
  required bytes serialized_data;
}

If the transport supports zero copy, that is obviously better than serializing then parsing a protocol buffer.

We should do this work in C++ as well to support more flexible stream transport.

Issue Links

• is related to: ARROW-1214 [Python] Add classes / functions to enable stream message components to be handled outside of the stream reader class
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #1259
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #1349