[ARROW-1463] [JAVA] Restructure ValueVector hierarchy to minimize compile-time generated code

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.9.0
• Component/s: Java
• Labels: pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/17483
• Assignee: Siddharth Teotia
• Reporter: Jacques Nadeau
• Created: 05/Sep/17 14:46
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 07:14
• Resolved: 22/Feb/18 21:00

Description

The templates used in the java package are very high mainteance and the if conditions are hard to track. As started in the discussion here: https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/1012, I'd like to propose that we modify the structure of the internal value vectors and code generation dynamics.

Create new abstract base vectors:

BaseFixedVector
BaseVariableVector
BaseNullableVector

For each of these, implement all the basic functionality of a vector without using templating.

Evaluate whether to use code generation to generate specific specializations of this functionality for each type where needed for performance purposes (probably constrained to mutator and accessor set/get methods). Giant and complex if conditions in the templates are actually worse from my perspective than a small amount of hand written duplicated code since templates are much harder to work with.

Issue Links

• is related to: ARROW-590 [Integration] Add integration tests for Union types
• is related to: ARROW-633 [Java] Add support for FixedSizeBinary type
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #1164

Sub-Tasks

• [JAVA] Create Benchmarking Suite for prototypes: Open
• [JAVA] Create Benchmarking Suite for final ValueVector updates: Open