# RFC 86: Column-oriented read API for vector layers

Author: | Even Rouault
Contact: | even.rouault @ spatialys.com
Started: | 2022-May-24
Updated: | 2022-June-14
Status: | Adopted
Target: | GDAL 3.6

## Summary

This RFC describes the addition of new methods to the `OGRLayer` class to retrieve batches of features with a column-oriented memory layout, that suits formats that have that organization or downstream consumers that expect data to be presented in such a way, in particular the Apache Arrow, Pandas / GeoPandas ecosystem, R spatial packages, and many modern (data analytics focused) databases / engines which are column oriented (eg Snowflake, Google BigQuery, ..)

## Motivation

Currently, to retrieve feature information, users must iterate over each feature of a layer with GetNextFeature(), which returns a C++ object, on which query attributes and geometries are retrieved with various “get” methods. When invoked from binding languages, a overhead typically occurs each time the other language calls native code. So to retrieve all information on a layer made of N_features and N_fields, you need of the order of N_features * N_fields calls. That overhead is significant. See below Benchmarks.

Another inconvenience of the C API is that processings that involve many rows of a same field (e.g computing statistics on a field) may require data to be contiguously placed in RAM, for the most efficient processing (use of vectorized CPU instruction). The current OGR API does not allow that directly, and require the users to shuffle itself data into appropriate data structures. Similarly the above mentioned frameworks (Arrow, Pandas/GeoPandas) require such memory layouts, and currently require reorganizing data when reading from OGR. The pyogrio project is for example an attempt at addressing that need.

Furthermore, the (Geo)Arrow IPC File Format / Stream and (Geo)Parquet drivers, whose file organization is columnar, and batch oriented, have been added in GDAL 3.5.0. Consequently a columnar-oriented API will enable the best performance for those formats.

## Details

The new proposed API implements the Apache Arrow C Stream interface. Reading that document, as well of the first paragraphs of the Apache Arrow C data interface. (details on the various data types can be skipped) is strongly encouraged for a better understanding of the rest of this RFC.

The Arrow C Stream interface is currently marked as experimental, but it has not evolved since its introduction in Nov 2020 and is already used in ABI sensitive places like the interface between the Arrow R bindings and DuckDB.

This interface consists of a set of C structures, ArrowArrayStream, that provides two main callbacks to get:

- a ArrowSchema with the get_schema() callback. A ArrowSchema describes a set of field descriptions (name, type, metadata). All OGR data types have a corresponding Arrow data type.

- a sequence of ArrowArray with the get_next() callback. A ArrowArray captures a set of values for a specific column/field in a subset of features. This is the equivalent of a Series in a Pandas DataFrame. This is a potentially hiearchical structure that can aggregate sub arrays, and in OGR usage, the main array will be a StructArray which is the collection of OGR attribute and geometry fields. The layout of buffers and children arrays per data type is detailed in the Arrow Columnar Format.

If a layer consists of 4 features with 2 fields (one of integer type, one of floating-point type), the representation as a ArrowArray is conceptually the following one:

    array.children[0].buffers[1] = { 1, 2, 3, 4 };
    array.children[1].buffers[1] = { 1.2, 2.3, 3.4, 4.5 };

The content of a whole layer can be seen as a sequence of record batches, each record batches being an ArrowArray of a subset of features. Instead of iterating over individual features, one iterates over a batch of several features at once.

The ArrowArrayStream, ArrowSchema, ArrowArray structures are defined in a ogr_recordbatch.h public header file, directly derived from https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/master/cpp/src/arrow/c/abi.h to get API/ABI compatibility with Apache Arrow C++. This header file must be explicitly included when the related array batch API is used.

The following virtual method is added to the OGRLayer class:

>     virtual bool OGRLayer::GetArrowStream(struct ArrowArrayStream* out_stream,
>                                           CSLConstList papszOptions = nullptr);

This method is also available in the C API as OGR_L_GetArrowStream().

out_stream is a pointer to a ArrowArrayStream structure, that can be in a uninitialized state (the method will ignore any initial content).

On successful return, and when the stream interfaces is no longer needed, it must must be freed with out_stream->release(out_stream).

There are extra precautions to take into account in a OGR context. Unless otherwise specified by a particular driver implementation, the ArrowArrayStream structure, and the ArrowSchema or ArrowArray objects its callbacks have returned, should no longer be used (except for potentially being released) after the OGRLayer from which it was initialized has been destroyed (typically at dataset closing). Furthermore, unless otherwise specified by a particular driver implementation, only one ArrowArrayStream can be active at a time on a given layer (that is the last active one must be explicitly released before a next one is asked). Changing filter state, ignored columns, modifying the schema or using ResetReading()/GetNextFeature() while using a ArrowArrayStream is strongly discouraged and may lead to unexpected results. As a rule of thumb, no OGRLayer methods that affect the state of a layer should be called on a layer, while an ArrowArrayStream on it is active.

A potential usage can be:

    struct ArrowArrayStream stream;
    if( !poLayer->GetArrowStream(&stream, nullptr))
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "GetArrowStream() failed\n");
        exit(1);
    }
    struct ArrowSchema schema;
    if( stream.get_schema(&stream, &schema) == 0 )
    {
        // Do something useful
        schema.release(&schema);
    }
    while( true )
    {
        struct ArrowArray array;
        // Look for an error (get_next() returning a non-zero code), or
        // end of iteration (array.release == nullptr)
        //
        if( stream.get_next(&stream, &array) != 0 ||
            array.release == nullptr )
        {
            break;
        }
        // Do something useful
        array.release(&array);
    }
    stream.release(&stream);

The papszOptions that may be provided is a NULL terminated list of key=value strings, that may be driver specific.

OGRLayer has a base implementation of GetArrowStream() that is such:

- The get_schema() callback returns a schema whose top-level object returned is of type Struct, and whose children consist in the FID column, all OGR attribute fields and geometry fields to Arrow fields. The FID column may be omitted by providing the INCLUDE_FID=NO option.

  When get_schema() returns 0, and the schema is no longer needed, it must be released with the following procedure, to take into account that it might have been released by other code, as documented in the Arrow C data interface:

      if( out_schema->release )
          out_schema->release(out_schema)

- The get_next() callback retrieve the next record batch over the layer.

  out_array is a pointer to a ArrowArray structure, that can be in a uninitialized state (the method will ignore any initial content).

  The default implementation uses GetNextFeature() internally to retrieve batches of up to 65,536 features (configurable with the MAX_FEATURES_IN_BATCH=num option). The starting address of buffers allocated by the default implementation is aligned on 64-byte boundaries.

  The default implementation outputs geometries as WKB in a binary field, whose corresponding entry in the schema is marked with the metadata item `ARROW:extension:name` set to `ogc.wkb`. Specialized implementations may output by default other formats (particularly the Arrow driver that can return geometries encoded according to the GeoArrow specification (using a list of coordinates). The GEOMETRY_ENCODING=WKB option can be passed to force the use of WKB (through the default implementation)

  The method may take into account ignored fields set with SetIgnoredFields() (the default implementation does), and should take into account filters set with SetSpatialFilter() and SetAttributeFilter(). Note however that specialized implementations may fallback to the default (slower) implementation when filters are set.

  Mixing calls to GetNextFeature() and get_next() is not recommended, as the behavior will be unspecified (but it should not crash).

  When get_next() returns 0, and the array is no longer needed, it must be released with the following procedure, to take into account that it might have been released by other code, as documented in the Arrow C data interface:

      if( out_array->release )
          out_array->release(out_array)

Drivers that have a specialized implementation should advertise the new OLCFastGetArrowStream layer capability.

## Other remarks

Using directly (as a producer or a consumer) a ArrowArray is admittedly not trivial, and requires good intimacy with the Arrow C data interface and columnar array specifications, to know, in which buffer of an array, data is to be read, which data type void* buffers should be cast to, how to use buffers that contain null/not_null information, how to use offset buffers for data types of type List, etc.

For the consuming side, the new API will be best used with the (Py)Arrow, Pandas, GeoPandas, Numpy libraries which offer easier and safer access to record batches. The study of the gdal_array._RecordBatchAsNumpy() method added to the SWIG Python bindings can give a good hint of how to use an ArrowArray object, in conjunction with the associated ArrowSchema. DuckDB is also another example of using the ArrowArray interface: https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/blob/master/src/common/types/data_chunk.cpp

It is not expected that most drivers will have a dedicated implementation of GetArrowStream() or its callbacks. Implementing it requires a non-trivial effort, and significant gains are to be expected only for those for which I/O is very fast, and thus in-memory shuffling of data takes a substantial time relatively to the total time (I/O + shuffling).

Potential future work, not in the scope of this RFC, could be the addition of a column-oriented method to write new features, a WriteRecordBatch() method.

## Impacted drivers

- Arrow and Parquet: get_schema() and get_next() have a specialized implementation in those drivers that directly map to methods of the arrow-cpp library that bridges at near zero cost (no data copying) the internal C++ implementation with the C data interface.

- FlatGeoBuf and GeoPackage: a specialized implementation of get_next() has been done, which saves going through the OGRFeature abstraction. See below benchmarks for measurement of the efficiency.

## Bindings

Per this RFC, only the Python bindings are extended to map the new functionality.

The ogr.Layer class receives the following new methods:

- GetArrowStreamAsPyArrow(): wrapper over OGRLayer::GetArrowStream() that has a `schema` property with the C ArrowSchema into a corresponding PyArrow Schema object and which implements a Python iterator exposing the C ArrowArray returned by the get_next() callback as a corresponding PyArrow Array object. This is a almost zero-cost call.

- GetArrowStreamAsNumPy(): wrapper over OGRLayer::GetArrowStream() which implements a Python iterator exposing the C ArrowArray returned by the get_next() callback as a Python dictionary whose keys are field names and values a Numpy array representing the values of the ArrowArray. The mapping of types is done for all Arrow data types returned by the base implementation of OGRLayer::GetArrowStream(), but may not cover “exotic” data types that can be returned by specialized implementations such as the one in the Arrow/Parquet driver. For numeric data types, the Numpy array is a zero-copy adaptation of the C buffer. For other data types, a copy is involved, with potentially arrays of Python objects.

## Benchmarks

The test programs referenced in Annexes have been run on a dataset with 3.3 millions features, with 13 fields each (2 fields of type Integer, 8 of type String, 3 of type DateTime) and polygon geometries.

bench_ogr.py, bench_fiona.py and bench_ogr.cpp have similar functionality: iterating over features with GetNextFeature().

bench_pyogrio_raw.py does a little more by building Arrow arrays.

bench_pyogrio.py, bench_gepandas.py and bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py have all similar functionality: building a GeoPandas GeoDataFrame

bench_ogr_batch.cpp can be used to measure the raw performance of the proposed GetArrowStream() API.

1. nz-building-outlines.fgb (FlatGeoBuf, 1.8 GB)

Bench program | Timing (s)
--- | ---
bench_ogr.cpp | 6.3
bench_ogr.py | 71
bench_fiona.py | 68
bench_pyogrio_raw.py | 40
bench_pyogrio.py | 108
bench_geopandas.py | 232
bench_ogr_batch.cpp (driver impl.) | 4.5
bench_ogr_batch.cpp (base impl.) | 14
bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py (driver impl.) | 10
bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py (base impl.) | 20

“driver impl.” means that the specialized implementation of GetArrowStream() is used. “base impl.” means that the generic implementation of GetArrowStream(), using GetNextFeature() underneath, is used.

2. nz-building-outlines.parquet (GeoParquet, 436 MB)

Bench program | Timing (s)
--- | ---
bench_ogr.cpp | 6.4
bench_ogr.py | 72
bench_fiona.py | 70
bench_pyogrio_raw.py | 46
bench_pyogrio.py | 115
bench_geopandas.py | 228
bench_ogr_batch.cpp (driver impl.) | 1.6
bench_ogr_batch.cpp (base impl.) | 13.8
bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py (driver impl.) | 6.8
bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py (base impl.) | 20

Note: Fiona slightly modified to accept Parquet driver as a recognized one.

3. nz-building-outlines.gpkg (GeoPackage, 1.7 GB)

Bench program | Timing (s)
--- | ---
bench_ogr.cpp | 7.6
bench_ogr.py | 71
bench_fiona.py | 63
bench_pyogrio_raw.py | 41
bench_pyogrio.py | 103
bench_geopandas.py | 227
bench_ogr_batch.cpp (driver impl.) | 4.8
bench_ogr_batch.cpp (base impl.) | 15.5
bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py (driver impl.) | 10
bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py (base impl.) | 21

This demonstrates that:

- the new API can yield significant performance gains to ingest a OGR layer as a GeoPandas GeoDataFrame, of the order of a 4x - 10x speed-up compared to pyogrio, even without a specialized implementation of GetArrowStream(), and with formats that have a natural row organization (FlatGeoBuf, GeoPackage).

- the Parquet driver is where this shines most due to the file organization being columnar, and its native access layer being ArrowArray compatible.

- for drivers that don’t have a specialized implementation of GetArrowStream() and whose layout is row oriented, the GetNextFeature() approach is (a bit) faster than GetArrowStream().

## Backward compatibility

Only API additions, fully backward compatible.

The C++ ABI changes due to the addition of virtual methods.

## New dependencies

- For libgdal: none

  The Apache Arrow C data interface just defines 2 C structures. GDAL itself does not need to link against the Apache Arrow C++ libraries (it might link against them, if the Arrow and/or Parquet drivers are enabled, but that’s orthogonal to the topic discussed in this RFC).

- For Python bindings: none at compile time. At runtime, pyarrow is imported by GetArrowStreamAsPyArrow(). The GetArrowStreamAsNumPy() method is implemented internally by the gdal_array module, and thus is only available if Numpy is available at compile time and runtime.

## Documentation

New methods are documented, and a new documentation page will be added in the documentation.

## Testing

New methods are tested.

## Related PRs:

https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/compare/master…rouault:arrow_batch_new?expand=1

## Annexes

### bench_ogr.cpp

Use of traditional GetNextFeature() and related API from C

    #include "gdal_priv.h"
    #include "ogr_api.h"
    #include "ogrsf_frmts.h"

    int main(int argc, char* argv[])
    {
        GDALAllRegister();
        GDALDataset* poDS = GDALDataset::Open(argv[1]);
        OGRLayer* poLayer = poDS->GetLayer(0);
        OGRLayerH hLayer = OGRLayer::ToHandle(poLayer);
        OGRFeatureDefnH hFDefn = OGR_L_GetLayerDefn(hLayer);
        int nFields = OGR_FD_GetFieldCount(hFDefn);
        std::vector<OGRFieldType> aeTypes;
        for( int i = 0; i < nFields; i++ )
            aeTypes.push_back(OGR_Fld_GetType(OGR_FD_GetFieldDefn(hFDefn, i)));
        int nYear, nMonth, nDay, nHour, nMin, nSecond, nTZ;
        while( true )
        {
            OGRFeatureH hFeat = OGR_L_GetNextFeature(hLayer);
            if( hFeat == nullptr )
                break;
            OGR_F_GetFID(hFeat);
            for( int i = 0; i < nFields; i++ )
            {
                if( aeTypes[i] == OFTInteger )
                    OGR_F_GetFieldAsInteger(hFeat, i);
                else if( aeTypes[i] == OFTInteger64 )
                    OGR_F_GetFieldAsInteger64(hFeat, i);
                else if( aeTypes[i] == OFTReal )
                    OGR_F_GetFieldAsDouble(hFeat, i);
                else if( aeTypes[i] == OFTString )
                    OGR_F_GetFieldAsString(hFeat, i);
                else if( aeTypes[i] == OFTDateTime )
                    OGR_F_GetFieldAsDateTime(hFeat, i, &nYear, &nMonth, &nDay, &nHour, &nMin, &nSecond, &nTZ);
            }
            OGRGeometryH hGeom = OGR_F_GetGeometryRef(hFeat);
            if( hGeom )
            {
                int size = OGR_G_WkbSize(hGeom);
                GByte* pabyWKB = static_cast<GByte*>(malloc(size));
                OGR_G_ExportToIsoWkb( hGeom, wkbNDR, pabyWKB);
                CPLFree(pabyWKB);
            }
            OGR_F_Destroy(hFeat);
        }
        delete poDS;
        return 0;
    }

### bench_ogr.py

Use of traditional GetNextFeature() and related API from Python (port of bench_ogr.cpp)

    from osgeo import ogr
    import sys

    ds = ogr.Open(sys.argv[1])
    lyr = ds.GetLayer(0)
    lyr_defn = lyr.GetLayerDefn()
    fld_count = lyr_defn.GetFieldCount()
    types = [lyr_defn.GetFieldDefn(i).GetType() for i in range(fld_count)]
    for f in lyr:
        f.GetFID()
        for i in range(fld_count):
            fld_type = types[i]
            if fld_type == ogr.OFTInteger:
                f.GetFieldAsInteger(i)
            elif fld_type == ogr.OFTReal:
                f.GetFieldAsDouble(i)
            elif fld_type == ogr.OFTString:
                f.GetFieldAsString(i)
            else:
                f.GetField(i)
        geom = f.GetGeometryRef()
        if geom:
            geom.ExportToWkb()

### bench_fiona.py

Use of the Fiona Python library which uses the OGR C GetNextFeature() underneath to expose them as GeoJSON features holded by a Python dictionary.

    import sys
    import fiona

    with fiona.open(sys.argv[1], 'r') as features:
        for f in features:
            pass

Note

Changing the above loop to `list(features)` to accumulate features has a significant negative impact on memory usage on big datasets, and on memory usage.

### bench_pyogrio_raw.py

Use of the pyogrio Python library which uses the OGR C GetNextFeature() underneath to expose a layer as a set of Arrow arrays.

    import sys
    from pyogrio.raw import read

    read(sys.argv[1])

### bench_pyogrio.py

Use of the pyogrio Python library which uses the OGR C GetNextFeature() underneath to expose a layer as GeoPandas GeoDataFrame (which involves parsing WKB as GEOS objects)

    import sys
    from pyogrio import read_dataframe

    read_dataframe(sys.argv[1])

### bench_gepandas.py

Use of the GeoPandas Python library which uses Fiona underneath to expose a layer as GeoPandas GeoDataFrame.

    import sys
    import geopandas

    gdf = geopandas.read_file(sys.argv[1])

### bench_ogr_batch.cpp

Use of the proposed GetNextRecordBatch() API from C++

    #include "gdal_priv.h"
    #include "ogr_api.h"
    #include "ogrsf_frmts.h"
    #include "ogr_recordbatch.h"

    int main(int argc, char* argv[])
    {
        GDALAllRegister();
        GDALDataset* poDS = GDALDataset::Open(argv[1]);
        OGRLayer* poLayer = poDS->GetLayer(0);
        OGRLayerH hLayer = OGRLayer::ToHandle(poLayer);
        struct ArrowArrayStream stream;
        if( !OGR_L_GetArrowStream(hLayer, &stream, nullptr))
        {
            CPLError(CE_Failure, CPLE_AppDefined, "OGR_L_GetArrowStream() failed\n");
            exit(1);
        }
        while( true )
        {
            struct ArrowArray array;
            if( stream.get_next(&stream, &array) != 0 ||
                array.release == nullptr )
            {
                break;
            }
            array.release(&array);
        }
        stream.release(&stream);
        delete poDS;
        return 0;
    }

### bench_ogr_to_geopandas.py

Use of the proposed GetNextRecordBatchAsPyArrow API from Python, to build a GeoPandas GeoDataFrame from the concatenation of the returned arrays.

    import sys
    from osgeo import ogr
    import pyarrow as pa

    def layer_as_geopandas(lyr):
        stream = lyr.GetArrowStreamAsPyArrow()
        schema = stream.schema

        geom_field_name = None
        for field in schema:
            field_md = field.metadata
            if (field_md and field_md.get(b'ARROW:extension:name', None) == b'WKB') or field.name == lyr.GetGeometryColumn():
                geom_field_name = field.name
                break

        fields = [field for field in schema]
        schema_without_geom = pa.schema(list(filter(lambda f: f.name != geom_field_name, fields)))
        batches_without_geom = []
        non_geom_field_names = [f.name for f in filter(lambda f: f.name != geom_field_name, fields)]
        if geom_field_name:
            schema_geom = pa.schema(list(filter(lambda f: f.name == geom_field_name, fields)))
            batches_with_geom = []
        for record_batch in stream:
            arrays_without_geom = [record_batch.field(field_name) for field_name in non_geom_field_names]
            batch_without_geom = pa.RecordBatch.from_arrays(arrays_without_geom, schema=schema_without_geom)
            batches_without_geom.append(batch_without_geom)
            if geom_field_name:
                batch_with_geom = pa.RecordBatch.from_arrays([record_batch.field(geom_field_name)], schema=schema_geom)
                batches_with_geom.append(batch_with_geom)

        table = pa.Table.from_batches(batches_without_geom)
        df = table.to_pandas()
        if geom_field_name:
            from geopandas.array import from_wkb
            import geopandas as gp
            geometry = from_wkb(pa.Table.from_batches(batches_with_geom)[0])
            gdf = gp.GeoDataFrame(df, geometry=geometry)
            return gdf
        else:
            return df

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        ds = ogr.Open(sys.argv[1])
        lyr = ds.GetLayer(0)
        print(layer_as_geopandas(lyr))

## Voting history

+1 from PSC members MateuszL, JukkaR, HowardB and EvenR