Project: Apache Spark (App Definition and Development / Streaming & Messaging)
File: sql-getting-started.md

layout: global title: Getting Started displayTitle: Getting Started license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. Table of contents {:toc} <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> The entry point into all functionality in Spark is the class. To create a basic `SparkSession`, just use `SparkSession.builder`: {% includeexample initsession python/sql/basic.py %} </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> The entry point into all functionality in Spark is the class. To create a basic `SparkSession`, just use `SparkSession.builder()`: {% includeexample initsession scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> The entry point into all functionality in Spark is the class. To create a basic `SparkSession`, just use `SparkSession.builder()`: {% includeexample initsession java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} </div> <div data-lang="r" markdown="1"> The entry point into all functionality in Spark is the class. To initialize a basic `SparkSession`, just call `sparkR.session()`: {% includeexample initsession r/RSparkSQLExample.R %} Note that when invoked for the first time, `sparkR.session()` initializes a global `SparkSession` singleton instance, and always returns a reference to this instance for successive invocations. In this way, users only need to initialize the `SparkSession` once, then SparkR functions like `read.df` will be able to access this global instance implicitly, and users don't need to pass the `SparkSession` instance around. </div> </div> `SparkSession` in Spark 2.0 provides builtin support for Hive features including the ability to write queries using HiveQL, access to Hive UDFs, and the ability to read data from Hive tables. To use these features, you do not need to have an existing Hive setup. <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> With a `SparkSession`, applications can create DataFrames from an , from a Hive table, or from . As an example, the following creates a DataFrame based on the content of a JSON file: {% includeexample createdf python/sql/basic.py %} </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> With a `SparkSession`, applications can create DataFrames from an , from a Hive table, or from . As an example, the following creates a DataFrame based on the content of a JSON file: {% includeexample createdf scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> With a `SparkSession`, applications can create DataFrames from an , from a Hive table, or from . As an example, the following creates a DataFrame based on the content of a JSON file: {% includeexample createdf java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} </div> <div data-lang="r" markdown="1"> With a `SparkSession`, applications can create DataFrames from a local R

from a Hive table, or from . As an example, the following creates a DataFrame based on the content of a JSON file: {% includeexample createdf r/RSparkSQLExample.R %} </div> </div> DataFrames provide a domain-specific language for structured data manipulation in , , and . As mentioned above, in Spark 2.0, DataFrames are just Dataset of `Row`s in Scala and Java API. These operations are also referred as "untyped transformations" in contrast to "typed transformations" come with strongly typed Scala/Java Datasets. Here we include some basic examples of structured data processing using Datasets: <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> In Python, it's possible to access a DataFrame's columns either by attribute (`df.age`) or by indexing (`df['age']`). While the former is convenient for interactive data exploration, users are highly encouraged to use the latter form, which is future proof and won't break with column names that are also attributes on the DataFrame class. {% includeexample untypedops python/sql/basic.py %} For a complete list of the types of operations that can be performed on a DataFrame refer to the . In addition to simple column references and expressions, DataFrames also have a rich library of functions including string manipulation, date arithmetic, common math operations and more. The complete list is available in the . </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> {% includeexample untypedops scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} For a complete list of the types of operations that can be performed on a Dataset, refer to the . In addition to simple column references and expressions, Datasets also have a rich library of functions including string manipulation, date arithmetic, common math operations and more. The complete list is available in the . </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> {% includeexample untypedops java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} For a complete list of the types of operations that can be performed on a Dataset refer to the . In addition to simple column references and expressions, Datasets also have a rich library of functions including string manipulation, date arithmetic, common math operations and more. The complete list is available in the . </div> <div data-lang="r" markdown="1"> {% includeexample untypedops r/RSparkSQLExample.R %} For a complete list of the types of operations that can be performed on a DataFrame refer to the . In addition to simple column references and expressions, DataFrames also have a rich library of functions including string manipulation, date arithmetic, common math operations and more. The complete list is available in the . </div> </div> <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> The `sql` function on a `SparkSession` enables applications to run SQL queries programmatically and returns the result as a `DataFrame`. {% includeexample runsql python/sql/basic.py %} </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> The `sql` function on a `SparkSession` enables applications to run SQL queries programmatically and returns the result as a `DataFrame`. {% includeexample runsql scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> The `sql` function on a `SparkSession` enables applications to run SQL queries programmatically and returns the result as a `Dataset<Row>`. {% includeexample runsql

%} </div> <div data-lang="r" markdown="1"> The `sql` function enables applications to run SQL queries programmatically and returns the result as a `SparkDataFrame`. {% includeexample runsql r/RSparkSQLExample.R %} </div> </div> Temporary views in Spark SQL are session-scoped and will disappear if the session that creates it terminates. If you want to have a temporary view that is shared among all sessions and keep alive until the Spark application terminates, you can create a global temporary view. Global temporary view is tied to a system preserved database `global_temp`, and we must use the qualified name to refer it, e.g. `SELECT * FROM global_temp.view1`. <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> {% includeexample globaltemp_view python/sql/basic.py %} </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> {% includeexample globaltemp_view scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> {% includeexample globaltemp_view java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} </div> <div data-lang="SQL" markdown="1"> {% highlight sql %} CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY VIEW temp_view AS SELECT a + 1, b * 2 FROM tbl SELECT * FROM globaltemp.tempview {% endhighlight %} </div> </div> Datasets are similar to RDDs, however, instead of using Java serialization or Kryo they use a specialized to serialize the objects for processing or transmitting over the network. While both encoders and standard serialization are responsible for turning an object into bytes, encoders are code generated dynamically and use a format that allows Spark to perform many operations like filtering, sorting and hashing without deserializing the bytes back into an object. <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> {% includeexample createds scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> {% includeexample createds java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} </div> </div> Spark SQL supports two different methods for converting existing RDDs into Datasets. The first method uses reflection to infer the schema of an RDD that contains specific types of objects. This reflection-based approach leads to more concise code and works well when you already know the schema while writing your Spark application. The second method for creating Datasets is through a programmatic interface that allows you to construct a schema and then apply it to an existing RDD. While this method is more verbose, it allows you to construct Datasets when the columns and their types are not known until runtime. <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> Spark SQL can convert an RDD of Row objects to a DataFrame, inferring the datatypes. Rows are constructed by passing a list of key/value pairs as kwargs to the Row class. The keys of this list define the column names of the table, and the types are inferred by sampling the whole dataset, similar to the inference that is performed on JSON files. {% includeexample schemainferring python/sql/basic.py %} </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> The Scala interface for Spark SQL supports automatically converting an RDD containing case classes to a DataFrame. The case class defines the schema of the table. The names of the arguments to the case class are read using reflection and become the names of the columns. Case classes can also be nested or contain complex types such as `Seq`s or

This RDD can be implicitly converted to a DataFrame and then be registered as a table. Tables can be used in subsequent SQL statements. {% includeexample schemainferring scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> Spark SQL supports automatically converting an RDD of into a DataFrame. The `BeanInfo`, obtained using reflection, defines the schema of the table. Currently, Spark SQL does not support JavaBeans that contain `Map` field(s). Nested JavaBeans and `List` or `Array` fields are supported though. You can create a JavaBean by creating a class that implements Serializable and has getters and setters for all of its fields. {% includeexample schemainferring java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} </div> </div> <div class="codetabs"> <div data-lang="python" markdown="1"> When a dictionary of kwargs cannot be defined ahead of time (for example, the structure of records is encoded in a string, or a text dataset will be parsed and fields will be projected differently for different users), a `DataFrame` can be created programmatically with three steps. Create an RDD of tuples or lists from the original RDD; Create the schema represented by a `StructType` matching the structure of tuples or lists in the RDD created in the step 1. Apply the schema to the RDD via `createDataFrame` method provided by `SparkSession`. For example: {% includeexample programmaticschema python/sql/basic.py %} </div> <div data-lang="scala" markdown="1"> When case classes cannot be defined ahead of time (for example, the structure of records is encoded in a string, or a text dataset will be parsed and fields will be projected differently for different users), a `DataFrame` can be created programmatically with three steps. Create an RDD of `Row`s from the original RDD; Create the schema represented by a `StructType` matching the structure of `Row`s in the RDD created in Step 1. Apply the schema to the RDD of `Row`s via `createDataFrame` method provided by `SparkSession`. For example: {% includeexample programmaticschema scala/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/SparkSQLExample.scala %} </div> <div data-lang="java" markdown="1"> When JavaBean classes cannot be defined ahead of time (for example, the structure of records is encoded in a string, or a text dataset will be parsed and fields will be projected differently for different users), a `Dataset<Row>` can be created programmatically with three steps. Create an RDD of `Row`s from the original RDD; Create the schema represented by a `StructType` matching the structure of `Row`s in the RDD created in Step 1. Apply the schema to the RDD of `Row`s via `createDataFrame` method provided by `SparkSession`. For example: {% includeexample programmaticschema java/org/apache/spark/examples/sql/JavaSparkSQLExample.java %} </div> </div> Scalar functions are functions that return a single value per row, as opposed to aggregation functions, which return a value for a group of rows. Spark SQL supports a variety of . It also supports . Aggregate functions are functions that return a single value on a group of rows. The provide common aggregations such as `count()`, `count_distinct()`, `avg()`, `max()`, `min()`, etc. Users are not limited to the predefined aggregate functions and can create their own. For more details about user defined aggregate functions, please refer to the documentation of .