[SYSTEMDS-153] Allow input data file without requiring corresponding metadata file

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Fix Version/s: Not Applicable
• Assignee: Jon Deron Eriksson
• Reporter: Jon Deron Eriksson
• Created: 15/Aug/15 00:30
• Updated: 16/Sep/16 19:15
• Resolved: 16/Sep/16 19:14

Description

Right now a metadata file is required for an input data file. For example, a matrix.csv file would typically require a matrix.csv.mtd file. Creating a .mtd manually is a minor annoyance in terms of consumability of SystemML. It would be nice if there were some mechanism so that a metadata file does not need to be provided in all cases.

One possibility is that if no metadata file is present, SystemML could assume a particular default format (for example, a comma-separated delimited file). The number of rows and columns could be determined by parsing the file. This might work well for small files but not necessarily well for enormous files.

A possible way to solve this would be to use a file extension to indicate that you have a small input data file and you don't want to have to provide a metadata file. For example, you could have a matrix.csv-nomtd file. The .csv part of the extension indicates that it's a csv file, and the -nomtd part of the extension indicates that you don't want to provide metadata.

Issue Links

• depends upon: SYSTEMDS-499 Add Implicit Support For File Extensions