How to force DataFrame evaluation in Spark

Question

Sometimes (e.g. for testing and bechmarking) I want force the execution of the transformations defined on a DataFrame. AFAIK calling an action like count does not ensure that all Columns are actually computed, show may only compute a subset of all Rows (see examples below)

My solution is to write the DataFrame to HDFS using df.write.saveAsTable, but this "clutters" my system with tables I don't want to keep any further.

So what is the best way to trigger the evaluation of a DataFrame?

Edit:

Note that there is also a recent discussion on the spark developer list : http://apache-spark-developers-list.1001551.n3.nabble.com/Will-count-always-trigger-an-evaluation-of-each-row-td21018.html

I made a small example which shows that count on DataFrame does not evaluate everything (tested using Spark 1.6.3 and spark-master = local[2]):

val df = sc.parallelize(Seq(1)).toDF("id")
val myUDF = udf((i:Int) => {throw new RuntimeException;i})

df.withColumn("test",myUDF($"id")).count // runs fine
df.withColumn("test",myUDF($"id")).show() // gives Exception

Using the same logic, here an example that show does not evaluate all rows:

val df = sc.parallelize(1 to 10).toDF("id")
val myUDF = udf((i:Int) => {if(i==10) throw new RuntimeException;i})

df.withColumn("test",myUDF($"id")).show(5) // runs fine
df.withColumn("test",myUDF($"id")).show(10) // gives Exception

Edit 2 : For Eliasah: The Exception says this:

org.apache.spark.SparkException: Job aborted due to stage failure: Task 0 in stage 6.0 failed 1 times, most recent failure: Lost task 0.0 in stage 6.0 (TID 6, localhost): java.lang.RuntimeException
    at $iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$anonfun$1.apply$mcII$sp(<console>:68)
    at $iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$anonfun$1.apply(<console>:68)
    at $iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$anonfun$1.apply(<console>:68)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.catalyst.expressions.GeneratedClass$SpecificUnsafeProjection.apply(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.execution.Project$$anonfun$1$$anonfun$apply$1.apply(basicOperators.scala:51)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.execution.Project$$anonfun$1$$anonfun$apply$1.apply(basicOperators.scala:49)
    at scala.collection.Iterator$$anon$11.next(Iterator.scala:328)
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Driver stacktrace:
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler.org$apache$spark$scheduler$DAGScheduler$$failJobAndIndependentStages(DAGScheduler.scala:1431)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler$$anonfun$abortStage$1.apply(DAGScheduler.scala:1419)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler$$anonfun$abortStage$1.apply(DAGScheduler.scala:1418)
    at scala.collection.mutable.ResizableArray$class.foreach(ResizableArray.scala:59)
    at scala.collection.mutable.ArrayBuffer.foreach(ArrayBuffer.scala:47)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler.abortStage(DAGScheduler.scala:1418)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler$$anonfun$handleTaskSetFailed$1.apply(DAGScheduler.scala:799)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler$$anonfun$handleTaskSetFailed$1.apply(DAGScheduler.scala:799)
    at scala.Option.foreach(Option.scala:236)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler.handleTaskSetFailed(DAGScheduler.scala:799)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGSchedulerEventProcessLoop.doOnReceive(DAGScheduler.scala:1640)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGSchedulerEventProcessLoop.onReceive(DAGScheduler.scala:1599)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGSchedulerEventProcessLoop.onReceive(DAGScheduler.scala:1588)
    at org.apache.spark.util.EventLoop$$anon$1.run(EventLoop.scala:48)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.DAGScheduler.runJob(DAGScheduler.scala:620)
    at org.apache.spark.SparkContext.runJob(SparkContext.scala:1832)
    at org.apache.spark.SparkContext.runJob(SparkContext.scala:1845)
    at org.apache.spark.SparkContext.runJob(SparkContext.scala:1858)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.execution.SparkPlan.executeTake(SparkPlan.scala:212)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.execution.Limit.executeCollect(basicOperators.scala:165)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.execution.SparkPlan.executeCollectPublic(SparkPlan.scala:174)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame$$anonfun$org$apache$spark$sql$DataFrame$$execute$1$1.apply(DataFrame.scala:1500)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame$$anonfun$org$apache$spark$sql$DataFrame$$execute$1$1.apply(DataFrame.scala:1500)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.execution.SQLExecution$.withNewExecutionId(SQLExecution.scala:56)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.withNewExecutionId(DataFrame.scala:2087)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.org$apache$spark$sql$DataFrame$$execute$1(DataFrame.scala:1499)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.org$apache$spark$sql$DataFrame$$collect(DataFrame.scala:1506)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame$$anonfun$head$1.apply(DataFrame.scala:1376)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame$$anonfun$head$1.apply(DataFrame.scala:1375)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.withCallback(DataFrame.scala:2100)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.head(DataFrame.scala:1375)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.take(DataFrame.scala:1457)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.showString(DataFrame.scala:170)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.show(DataFrame.scala:350)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.show(DataFrame.scala:311)
    at org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame.show(DataFrame.scala:319)
    at $iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC$$iwC.<init>(<console>:74)
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Answer 1

It's a bit late, but here's the fundamental reason: count does not act the same on RDD and DataFrame.

In DataFrames there's an optimization, as in some cases you do not require to load data to actually know the number of elements it has (especially in the case of yours where there's no data shuffling involved). Hence, the DataFrame materialized when count is called will not load any data and will not pass into your exception throwing. You can easily do the experiment by defining your own DefaultSource and Relation and see that calling count on a DataFrame will always end up in the method buildScan with no requiredColumns no matter how many columns you did select (cf. org.apache.spark.sql.sources.interfaces to understand more). It's actually a very efficient optimization ;-)

In RDDs though, there's no such optimizations (that's why one should always try to use DataFrames when possible). Hence the count on RDD executes all the lineage and returns the sum of all sizes of the iterators composing any partitions.

Calling dataframe.count goes into the first explanation, but calling dataframe.rdd.count goes into the second as you did build an RDD out of your DataFrame. Note that calling dataframe.cache().count forces the dataframe to be materialized as you required Spark to cache the results (hence it needs to load all the data and transform it). But it does have the side-effect of caching your data...