[Python][Dataset] Expose schema inference / validation options in the factory

[asfimport]

ARROW-8058 added options related to schema inference / validation for the Dataset factory. We should expose this in Python in the dataset(..) factory function:

• Add ability to pass a user-specified schema with a schema keyword, instead of inferring the schema from (one of) the files (to be passed to the factory finish method)

• Add validate_schema option to toggle whether the schema is validated against the actual files or not.

• Expose in some way the number of fragments to be inspected when inferring or validating the schema. Not sure yet what the best API for this would be.

  Some relevant notes from the original PR: ARROW-8058: [Dataset] Relax DatasetFactory discovery validation #6687 (comment)

Reporter: Joris Van den Bossche / @jorisvandenbossche

Subtasks:

• [Python][Dataset] Passthrough schema to Factory.finish() in dataset() function

Related issues:

• [Python][Parquet] improve reading of partitioned parquet datasets whose schema changed (duplicates)
• [Python] add option for taking all columns from all files in pa.dataset (duplicates)
• ValueError: Keyword 'validate_schema' is not yet supported with the new Dataset API (is duplicated by)

PRs and other links:

• GitHub Pull Request #8912

_{Note: This issue was originally created as ARROW-8221. Please see the migration documentation for further details.}

[asfimport]

Weston Pace / @westonpace:
I think another thing that would be included in this work is the ability to specify columns that exist in some, but not all, of the items in the dataset.  Today if I specify column names I get an error if the first table doesn't contain that column even if the other tables do.

 

[asfimport]

Joris Van den Bossche / @jorisvandenbossche:
@westonpace do you have an example? Normally, missing columns in one of the files is something that should be supported already (they get filled with nulls).

In [1]: table = pa.table({'a': [1, 2, 3]})

In [2]: import pyarrow.dataset as ds

In [3]: ds.write_dataset(table, "test_columns", format="parquet")

In [6]: ds.dataset("test_columns").to_table().to_pandas()
Out[6]: 
   a
0  1
1  2
2  3

In [7]: ds.dataset("test_columns", schema=pa.schema([('a', 'int64'), ('b', 'float64')])).to_table().to_pandas()
Out[7]: 
   a   b
0  1 NaN
1  2 NaN
2  3 NaN

[asfimport]

Krisztian Szucs / @kszucs:
Postponing it to 7.0

[asfimport]

Apache Arrow JIRA Bot:
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[github-actions]

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