Python with Spark Connect

PySpark has accomplished many milestones such as Project Zen, and been increasingly growing. We introduced pandas API on Spark, and hugely improved usability such as error messages, type hints, etc., and PySpark has become almost the very standard of distributed computing in Python. With this trend, the kind of PySpark use cases became also very complicated especially for modern data applications such as notebooks, IDEs, even devices such as smart home devices leveraging the power of data, that virtually need a lightweight separate client. However, today’s PySpark client is considerably heavy, and does not allow the separation from its scheduler, optimizer and analyzer as an example.

In Apache Spark 3.4, one of the key features we introduced in PySpark is the Python client for Spark Connect that decouples client-server architecture for Apache Spark that allows remote connectivity to Spark clusters using the DataFrame API and unresolved logical plans as the protocol. The separation between client and server allows Apache Spark and its open ecosystem to be leveraged from everywhere. It can be embedded in modern data applications. In this talk, we will introduce what Spark Connect is, the internals of Spark Connect with Python, how to use Spark Connect with Python in the end-user perspective, and what’s next beyond Apache Spark 3.4.

Talk by: Hyukjin Kwon and Ruifeng Zheng