Ibis @ LinkedIn

Portable Python DataFrames

Chloe He

Phillip Cloud

Who

Phillip Cloud

Principal engineer at Voltron Data
Python analytics for 10+ years
Open source
Tech lead for Ibis

Chloe He

Founding engineer at Claypot → Senior engineer at Voltron Data
Infrastructure for real-time ML
Ibis streaming

What

Ibis is a Python library for:

Exploratory data analysis
General analytics
Data engineering
ML preprocessing
Library: (e.g., Google BigFrames)
Build your own … Ibis (??)

💡 Development to production with few rewrites

Examples

https://ibis-project.org/tutorials/getting_started

Raw data
Aggregated penguins
Mean-centered numerics

from ibis.interactive import *

penguins = ibis.examples.penguins.fetch()
penguins

┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           NULL │          NULL │              NULL │        NULL │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           36.7 │          19.3 │               193 │        3450 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.3 │          20.6 │               190 │        3650 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           38.9 │          17.8 │               181 │        3625 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.2 │          19.6 │               195 │        4675 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           34.1 │          18.1 │               193 │        3475 │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           42.0 │          20.2 │               190 │        4250 │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ …       │ …         │              … │             … │                 … │           … │ …      │     … │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(
    n=penguins.count(),
    avg_bill_mm=penguins.bill_length_mm.mean(),
    med_flipper_mm=penguins.flipper_length_mm.median()
)

┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ n     ┃ avg_bill_mm ┃ med_flipper_mm ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │ float64     │ float64        │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┼─────────────┼────────────────┤
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │   38.950980 │          191.0 │
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │   38.975000 │          189.5 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │   38.501786 │          190.0 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │   47.504878 │          216.0 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │   48.833824 │          196.0 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┴─────────────┴────────────────┘

cols = {
    c: penguins[c] - penguins[c].mean()
    for c in penguins.columns
    if penguins[c].type().is_numeric() and c != "year"
}
expr = penguins.group_by("species").mutate(**cols).head(5)
expr

┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ float64           │ float64     │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │       2.108609 │     -1.546358 │          1.046358 │   -0.662252 │ female │  2008 │
│ Adelie  │ Biscoe    │       3.908609 │     -0.046358 │          6.046358 │  374.337748 │ male   │  2009 │
│ Adelie  │ Dream     │       1.008609 │      0.753642 │         -5.953642 │  949.337748 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Dream     │      -2.291391 │     -0.346358 │         -7.953642 │ -550.662252 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │      -2.091391 │      0.953642 │          3.046358 │ -250.662252 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

Let’s talk about SQL

SQL

cols = {
    c: penguins[c] - penguins[c].mean()
    for c in penguins.columns
    if penguins[c].type().is_numeric() and c != "year"
}
expr = penguins.group_by("species").mutate(**cols).head(5)

ibis.to_sql(expr)

SELECT
  "t0"."species",
  "t0"."island",
  "t0"."bill_length_mm" - AVG("t0"."bill_length_mm") OVER (PARTITION BY "t0"."species" ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) AS "bill_length_mm",
  "t0"."bill_depth_mm" - AVG("t0"."bill_depth_mm") OVER (PARTITION BY "t0"."species" ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) AS "bill_depth_mm",
  "t0"."flipper_length_mm" - AVG("t0"."flipper_length_mm") OVER (PARTITION BY "t0"."species" ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) AS "flipper_length_mm",
  "t0"."body_mass_g" - AVG("t0"."body_mass_g") OVER (PARTITION BY "t0"."species" ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) AS "body_mass_g",
  "t0"."sex",
  "t0"."year"
FROM "penguins" AS "t0"
LIMIT 5

Back to examples…

`ibis-analytics`

https://ibis-analytics.streamlit.app

Why?

DataFrame lore

DataFrames appear in the S programming language, which evolves into the R ~~calculator~~ programming language.
pandas perfects the DataFrame in Python … or did it?
Dozens of Python DataFrame libraries appear and disappear…
pandas is the de facto standard for Python DataFrames. It still doesn’t scale.
Leads to data scientists throwing code over the wall to engineers.
What if Ibis were a new standard?

The legal dept requires this slide

Ibis origins

from Apache Arrow and the “10 Things I Hate About pandas” by Wes McKinney

…in 2015, I started the Ibis project…to create a pandas-friendly deferred expression system for static analysis and compilation [of] these types of [query planned, multicore execution] operations. Since an efficient multithreaded in-memory engine for pandas was not available when I started Ibis, I instead focused on building compilers for SQL engines (Impala, PostgreSQL, SQLite), similar to the R dplyr package. Phillip Cloud from the pandas core team has been actively working on Ibis with me for quite a long time.

Two world problem

What does Ibis solve?

SQL:

databases & tables
analytics
metrics
dashboards

Python:

files & DataFrames
data science
statistics
notebooks

Ibis bridges the gap.

import ibis

con = ibis.duckdb.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

An embeddable, zero-dependency, C++ SQL database engine.

import ibis

con = ibis.datafusion.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A Rust SQL query engine.

import ibis

con = ibis.clickhouse.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A C++ column-oriented database management system.

import ibis

con = ibis.polars.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A Rust DataFrame library.

import ibis

con = ibis.bigquery.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A serverless, highly scalable, and cost-effective cloud data warehouse.

import ibis

con = ibis.snowflake.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A cloud data platform.

import ibis

con = ibis.oracle.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A relational database management system.

import ibis

con = ibis.pyspark.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A unified analytics engine for large-scale data processing.

import ibis

con = ibis.trino.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A distributed SQL query engine.

import ibis

con = ibis.flink.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=ibis._.count())

A distributed streaming and batch SQL analytics engine.

How does Ibis work?

This is going to be very fast 🏃💨. I will happily answer questions about it 😂.

Engineering themes

Immutability
Type checking
Separation of concerns
Extensibility
Focus on end-user experience
Avoid common denominator trap
Scale up and down

Components: expressions

Expressions: interface

StringScalar, IntegerColumn, Table
.sum(), .split(), .join()
No knowledge of specific operation

Operations: implementation

Specific action: e.g., StringSplit
Inputs + output dtype, shape
Used for compiler dispatch

Other goodies

Type system
Pattern matching
Graph manipulation/traversal

Goal: separate API from implementation.

Components: expressions

from ibis.expr.visualize import to_graph

expr = penguins.group_by("species").agg(
    avg_bill_mm=_.bill_length_mm.mean()
)

to_graph(expr)

Components: compiler

expr = penguins.group_by("species").agg(
    avg_bill_mm=_.bill_length_mm.mean()
)

graph BT
  classDef white color:white;

  %% graph definition
  DatabaseTable --> species
  DatabaseTable --> bill_length_mm
  bill_length_mm --> Mean
  species --> Aggregate
  Mean --> Aggregate

  %% style
  class DatabaseTable white;
  class species white;
  class bill_length_mm white;
  class Mean white;
  class Aggregate white;

graph BT
  classDef white color:white;

  DatabaseTable2[DatabaseTable] --> species2[species]
  species2 --> bill_length_mm2[bill_length_mm]
  bill_length_mm2 --> Mean2[Mean]
  Mean2 --> Aggregate2[Aggregate]

  %% style
  class DatabaseTable2 white;
  class species2 white;
  class bill_length_mm2 white;
  class Mean2 white;
  class Aggregate2 white;

Components: compiler

Rewrite operations
Bottom up compile storing intermediate outputs
Handoff output to sqlglot

SELECT
  "t0"."species",
  AVG("t0"."bill_length_mm") AS "avg_bill_mm"
FROM "penguins" AS "t0"
GROUP BY
  1

Components: drivers

Drivers

We have SQL at this point
Send to DB via DBAPI: cursor.execute(ibis_generated_sql)
(Heavily) massage the output

Ibis + Streaming

Growth of streaming

Over 70% of Fortune 500 companies have adopted Kafka
54% of Databricks’ customers are using Spark Structured Streaming
The stream processing market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.5% from 2022 to 2028 (IDC)

Batch and streaming

graph LR
  subgraph " "
    direction LR
    A[data] --> B[batch processing] & C[stream processing] --> D[downstream]
  end

In the machine learning world…

graph TB
  proddata --> sampled
  model --> prodpipeline

  subgraph "local env"
    sampled[sampled data] --> local[local experimentation]
    local <--> iterate
    local --> model[finally, we have a production-ready model!]
  end

  subgraph "prod env"
    proddata[production data] --> prodpipeline[production pipelines]
  end

In the machine learning world…

graph TB
  proddata --> sampled
  model -- "code rewrite" --> prodpipeline

  linkStyle 1 color:white;

  subgraph "local env"
    sampled[sampled data] --> local[local experimentation]
    local <--> iterate
    local --> model[finally, we have a production-ready model!]
  end

  subgraph "prod env"
    proddata[production data] --> prodpipeline[production pipelines]
  end

A real-world example

pandas

return (
    clicks_df
    .groupby(["user"])
    .rolling("1h")
    .size()
)

Flink SQL

SELECT
  user,
  COUNT(url) OVER (
    PARTITION BY user
    ORDER BY click_time
    RANGE BETWEEN
      INTERVAL '1' HOUR PRECEDING
      AND CURRENT ROW
  ) AS one_hour_user_click_cnt
FROM clicks

Code rewrites

From batch to streaming
From local experimentation to production
Backfilling a streaming feature on a batch backing table
…

The solution…

Stream-batch unified API

Flink SQL
Spark DataFrame API
…

Stream-batch unification

pandas

return (
    clicks_df
    .groupby(["user"])
    .rolling("1h")
    .size()
)

Flink SQL

SELECT
  user,
  COUNT(url) OVER (
    PARTITION BY user
    ORDER BY click_time
    RANGE BETWEEN
      INTERVAL '1' HOUR PRECEDING
      AND CURRENT ROW
  ) AS one_hour_user_click_cnt
FROM clicks

Ibis

agged = clicks.select(
    _.user,
    one_hour_user_click_cnt=_.url.count().over(
        range=(-ibis.interval(hour=1), 0),
        group_by=_.user,
        order_by=_.click_time,
    ),
)

But it’s hard…

Streaming is different
- Time semantics
- Long-running queries
- Sources and sinks
- …
Less established standards in streaming syntax

Ibis streaming today

Flink backend and RisingWave backend launched in Ibis 8.0
Introduction of watermarks, windowed aggregations, etc in Ibis

What’s next?

Expand support of streaming operations and syntax
Continuously iterate on a stream-batch unified API
More streaming backends (Spark Structured Streaming)

Towards composable data systems

Try it out now!

Local installation
😬 Ibis in the browser 😬

Install:

pip install 'ibis-framework[duckdb]'

Then run:

from ibis.interactive import *

t = ibis.examples.penguins.fetch()
t.head()

┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           NULL │          NULL │              NULL │        NULL │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           36.7 │          19.3 │               193 │        3450 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

Questions?

Where to find us

Phillip

Chloe

Ibis @ LinkedIn

Who

What

Ibis is a Python library for:

Examples

Examples

Let’s talk about SQL

SQL

Back to examples…

ibis-analytics

Why?

DataFrame lore

The legal dept requires this slide

Ibis origins

Two world problem

What does Ibis solve?

Bridging the gap

How does Ibis work?

Engineering themes

Components: expressions

Other goodies

Components: expressions

Components: compiler

Components: compiler

Components: drivers

Drivers

Ibis + Streaming

Growth of streaming

Batch and streaming

In the machine learning world…

In the machine learning world…

A real-world example

Code rewrites

The solution…

Stream-batch unification

But it’s hard…

Ibis streaming today

What’s next?

Towards composable data systems

Try it out now!

Questions?

Where to find us

Links

`ibis-analytics`