[ARROW-86] Python: Implement zero-copy Arrow-to-Pandas conversion

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 0.1.0
• Component/s: Python
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/15505
• Assignee: Uwe Korn
• Reporter: Uwe Korn
• Created: 28/Mar/16 15:59
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 07:07
• Resolved: 03/Apr/16 20:10

Description

For this to work, we need:

• a check if the Arrow Array could be represented as Pandas Series using the same memory buffer
• a numpy.ndarray subclass that keeps a reference to the Arrow Array

With the NumPy C-API it is already possible to create a numpy.ndarray instance that uses the Arrow Array memory buffer internally but there is no way to keep track if the numpy.ndarray still lives or the underlying memory can be free'd.