Skip to content

Honor identity sort orders for Arrow table writes - #3830

Open
adonm wants to merge 3 commits into
apache:mainfrom
adonm:feat/identity-sorted-writes
Open

Honor identity sort orders for Arrow table writes#3830
adonm wants to merge 3 commits into
apache:mainfrom
adonm:feat/identity-sorted-writes

Conversation

@adonm

@adonm adonm commented Aug 21, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown

Related: #271 and #3848

Rationale for this change

PyIceberg accepts table sort metadata but currently writes unsorted files and hard-codes sort_order_id=None. This prevents readers from safely using sort-order-aware pruning and leaves manifest metadata inconsistent with users' write intent.

What changes?

Honors table sort orders for materialized pyarrow.Table writes when every sort field uses an identity transform and one consistent null placement:

  • sorts unpartitioned tables before bin packing
  • sorts each final Iceberg partition independently before bin packing
  • carries the table sort-order ID through WriteTask
  • writes the truthful DataFile.sort_order_id

Unsupported transforms, nested/missing fields, mixed null placement, and streaming RecordBatchReader writes preserve current behavior: data is not claimed as sorted and the file sort-order ID remains null. A warning explains why.

Are these changes tested?

  • Unit tests cover ascending/descending ordering, nulls-first/nulls-last placement, the returned sort-order ID, and the partitioned write path
  • Integration test verifies scan order and manifest sort_order_id against a REST catalog
  • PYTHONPATH=. uv run pytest tests/io/test_pyarrow.py -k "sort_table_for_identity_sort_order or write_sorted_data_files_per_partition" -q — passed
  • ruff check on changed files — passed
  • git diff --check — passed

Are there any user-facing changes?

Yes. Tables with an identity-transform sort order now write physically sorted data files carrying the truthful sort_order_id; previously all files were written unsorted with a null sort-order ID. Unsupported sort orders keep the previous behavior. Changelog label requested.

Tooling note: developed with assistance from DS v4 Pro. I reviewed and verified the changes.

@adonm

adonm commented Aug 25, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Author

Synced with latest main (now 13 commits ahead of the original base, including the pyarrow 24→25 upgrade).

pyarrow 25 deprecated the SortOptions-level null_placement argument (per-key null placement was added in Arrow 25 / GH-46926), and the project's pytest config promotes warnings to errors, so the original pc.sort_indices(..., null_placement=...) call started failing against the new base. Fixed with a version-aware call and tightened the annotations so strict mypy stays clean (zero new errors vs main).

Verified locally: unit test, docker-based REST catalog integration test (test_write_identity_sort_order), ruff, and mypy.

@adonm
adonm force-pushed the feat/identity-sorted-writes branch from eeef9cd to 3660095 Compare August 25, 2026 04:59
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant