[PIG-1125] [zebra] Using typed APIs for Zebra's Map/Reduce interface

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.4.0
• Fix Version/s: 0.6.0, 0.7.0
• Assignee: Chao Wang
• Reporter: Chao Wang
• Created: 04/Dec/09 01:38
• Updated: 24/Mar/10 22:16
• Resolved: 09/Dec/09 05:09

Description

We plan to modify Zebra's M/R interface to use typed APIs, i.e., APIs taking object arguments, instead of String arguments.

Take TableInputFormat as an example:

setSchema(jobConf conf, String schema) is changing to setSchema(jobConf conf, ZebraSchemaInfo schemaInfo)
setProjection(jobConf conf, String projection) is changing to setProjection(jobConf conf, ZebraProjectionInfo projectionInfo)

and so on.

Benefits: 1) Typed APIs make it easier to detect usage mistakes earlier and 2) Typed APIs are richer and hide things better.

In the meanwhile, we plan to make the old APIs deprecated, instead of removing them, for the sake of safety.