Using WebMapReduce (WMR)

Introduction

For this activity, you need to have read the accompanying background reading in the previous section entitled Using Parallelism to Analyze Very Large Files: Google’s MapReduce Paradigm.

In this lab you will use a web-based program called WebMapReduce (WMR) that enables you to formulate map-reduce computations and run them on an underlying Hadoop map-reduce system running on a cluster of computers.

You will use WebMapReduce on a cluster of computers at Saint Olaf College. You should access WebMapReduce now and register for a login by going to this URL on your web browser:

http://cumulus.cs.stolaf.edu/wmr/

Choose the link at the very upper right of this page that says ‘Register’. Use your email address as your login name, and provide the other information asked for. You choose your own password, so that you can remember it and have control of your account.

Note: To complete your registration, you will need a registration key from your instructor.

For later reference, you may want to check this documentation for WMR.

For this activity, you should be able to follow along with the instructions below and determine how to use WMR.

An example of map-reduce computing with WMR: counting words

To program with map-reduce, you must first decide how to use mappers and reducers in order to accomplish your computational goal. The mapper function should take a line of input and decompose it somehow into key-value pairs; then the reducer should somehow condense or analyze all the key-value pairs having a common key, and produce a desired result.

The following example is small to illustrate how the process works. In realistic applications, which you will try later in this activity and in homework, the input data is much larger (several to hundreds of Gigabytes) and is stored in the Hadoop system. You will go through the following exercise first to ensure that the code is working and that you understand how it works. Then you can move on to bigger files. This is the process you should go through when doing this kind of coding: work on small amounts of data first to ensure correctness of your code, then try larger amounts of data.

As an example, consider the problem of counting how frequently each word appears in a collection of text data. For example, if the input data in a file is:

One fish, Two fish,
Red Fish, Blue fish.
Blue Fish, Two Fish.

then the output should be:

Blue 2
One 1
Red 1
Two 2
fish, 2
Fish, 2
fish. 1
Fish. 1

As this output indicates, we did not make any attempt to trim punctuation characters in this first example. Nor did we consider that some words in our text might be capatalized and some may not. We will also not do so as we practice using WebMapReduce with the initial functions described below. However, you can consider adding punctuation removal and lowercase conversion to your mapper code as you work through the example.

Note

The WebMapReduce system will sort the words according to the ASCII codes of the characters within words.

What follows is a plan for the mapper and reducer functions.

Map-reduce plan

In WMR, mapper functions work simultaneously on lines of input from files, where a line ends with a newline charater. The mapper will produce one key-value pair (w, count) for each and every word encountered in the input line that it is working on.

Thus, on the above input, three mappers working together, one on each line, could emit the following combined output:

One 1
fish, 1
fish, 1
Two 1

Red 1
Fish, 1
Blue 1
fish. 1

Blue 1
Fish, 1
Two 1
Fish. 1

The reducers will compute the sum of all the count values for a given word w, then produce the key-value pair (w, sum).

In this example, we can envision a reducer for each distinct word found by the three mappers, where the reducer gets a list of single counts per occurance of the word that a mapper found, loking like this:

One    [1]
fish,  [1, 1]
Two    [1,1]
Red    [1]
Fish,  [1,1]
Blue   [1,1]
fish.  [1]
Fish.  [1]

Each reducer works on one of the pairs of data shown above, and the system handles creating words with the lists of counts as shown above.

One System, Many Languages

In map-reduce framework systems in general and in WMR specifically, you can use one of several programming languages to code your mapper and reducer functions. The following table contains links to solutions in several languages for the word-count solution we describe below.

Lnaguage Mapper function code Reducer function code
Python wcmapper.py wcreducer.py
C++ wcmapper.cpp wcreducer.cpp
C wcmapper.c wcreducer.c
Java wcmapper.java wcreducer.java

The mapper function

Each mapper process is receiving a line from a file as its key initially when the process starts (the value is empty, or null). You write one mapper function to be executed by those prcesses on any given line from any particular file. Our goal is to have the mapper output a new (key, value) containing a word found and the number one, as shown for the three-mapper example above.

Here is psedocode for what a typical mapper might accomplish:

# key is a single line from a file.
#
# value is empty in this case, since this is the first mapper function
# we are applying.
#
function mapper(key, value)
  1) Take the key argument to this function, which is the line of text,
     and split it on whitespace

  2) For every word resulting from the split key line:

      'emit' a pair (word, "1") to the system for the reducers to handle

Here is a Python3 mapper function for accomplishing this task using the WMR system. We include the feature of stripping away puncuation characters from the input and converting each word found to lowercase.

1
2
3
4
def mapper(key, value):
    words=key.split()
    for word in words:
        Wmr.emit(word, '1')

This code is available for download in the table above, as are versions in other languages. Note that in each language you will need to know how to specify the (key, value) pair to emit to the system for the reducers to process. We see this for Python in line 4 above.

The reducer function

In the system, there will be reducer processes to handle each word ‘key’ that was emitted by various mappers. You write reducer code as if your reducer function is getting one word key and a container of counts, where each count came from a different mapper that was working on a different line of a file or files. In this simplest example, each count is a ‘1’, each of which will be summed together by the reducer handling the particular word as a key.

Pseudocode for a reducer for this problem looks like this:

# key is a single word, values is a 'container' of counts that were
# gathered by the system from every mapper
#
function reducer(key, values)

  set a sum accumulator to zero

  for each count in values
    accumulate the sum by adding count to it

  'emit' the (key, sum) pair

A reducer function for solving the word-count problem in Python is

1
2
3
4
5
def reducer(key, iter):
    sum = 0
    for s in iter:
        sum = sum + int(s)
    Wmr.emit(key, str(sum))

This code is also available in the table above containing versions in several languages.

The function reducer() is called once for each distinct key that appears among the key-value pairs emitted by the mapper, and that call processes all of the key-value pairs that use that key. On line 1, the two parameters that are arguments of reducer() are that one distinct key and a Python3 iterator (similar to a list, but not quite) called values, which provides access to all the values for that key. Iterators in Python3 are designed for for loops- note in line 3 that we can simply ask for each value one at a time from the set of values held by the iterator.

Rationale: WMR reducer() functions use iterators instead of lists because the number of values may be very large in the case of large data. For example, there would be billions of occurrences of the word “the” if our data consisted of all pages on the web. When there are a lot of key-value pairs, it is more efficient to dispense pairs one at a time through an iterator than to create a gigantic complete list and hold that list in main memory; also, an enormous list may overfill main memory.

The reducer() function adds up all the counts that appear in key-value pairs for the key that appears as reducer()‘s first argument (recall these come from separate mappers). Each count provided by the iterator values is a string, so in line 4 we must first convert it to an integer before adding it to the running total sum.

The method Wmr.emit() is used to produce key-value pairs as output from the mapper. This time, only one pair is emitted, consisting of the word being counted and sum, which holds the number of times that word appeared in all of the original data.

Running the example code on WebMapReduce

To run WMR with this combination of data, mapper, and reducer, carry out the following steps.

  • In a browser, visit the WMR site at (if you don’t already have it open from registering):

  • After you have registered, you can use your email address and password to login. After successfully logging in, you are taken to the WMR page where you can complete your work.

  • Enter a job name (perhaps involving your username, for uniqueness; avoid spaces in the job name and make sure that it is more than 4 characters long).

  • Choose the language that you wish to try.

  • For now, you can leave the number of map tasks and reduce tasks blank. This will let the system decide this for itself. You can also leave the default choice of sorting alphabetically.

  • Enter the input data, e.g., the fish lines above. You can use the Direct Input option and enter that data in the text box provided.

  • Enter the mapper. It’s probably best to use se the ``Upload” option and navigate to a file that contains the mapper, which you have entered using an editor (this is more convenient for repeated runs). Or you can use the file we provided in a table of links above.

    Beware: cutting and pasting your code from a pdf file or a web page or typing it into the `’direct’ entry box for Python code is a bit problematic, because the needed tabs in the code might not be preserved (although using spaces should work). Check that the appropriate radio button is clicked to indicate the source option you’re actually using.

  • Also enter the reducer. Again, it’s easier to use the file provided with a link in the table above.

  • Click on the submit button.

A page should appear indicating that the job started successfully. This page will refresh itself as it is working on the job to show you progress.

Once the job runs to completion, you should see a Job Complete page. This page will include your output. If you used the fish input, your output should match the illustration above, except that the punctuation should also be taken care of.

If something doesn’t work as described here, the following section may help with troubleshooting. Read it next in any case so that you know what you can do when you work on your own new examples.

Using WMR and its test mode

Here is some information about developing WMR map-reduce programs,and what to do if something goes wrong with your WMR job.

  • First, a reminder:
    • At present, the WMR interface does not automatically reset radio buttons for you when you upload a file or use Distributed FileSystem data generated from a prior map-reduce run. Always check to see that the radio buttons select the data, mapper, and reducer resources you intend.
  • You can test your mapper alone without using your reducer by using the identity reducer, which simply emits the same key-value pairs that it receives. Here is an implementation of the identity reducer for Python:
1
2
3
def reducer(key, iter):
    for s in iter:
        Wmr.emit(key, s)

As an example, if you use the word-count mapper with the identity reducer, then the “fish” data above should produce the following output:

Blue 1
Blue  1
fish, 1
fish, 1
fish. 1
Fish, 1
Fish, 1
Fish. 1
One 1
Red 1
Two 1
Two 1

Observe that the output is sorted, due to the shuffling step. However, this does show all the key-value pairs that result from the word-count mapper.

  • Likewise, you can test your reducer alone without using your mapper by substituting the identity mapper, which simply copies key-value pairs from lines of input data. Here is an implementation of the identity mapper in Python:

    1
    2
    def mapper(key, value):
        Wmr.emit(key, value)
    

Here are identity mappers and reducers for some languages.

Lnaguage Mapper function code Reducer function code
Python idmapper.py idreducer.py
C++ idmapper.cpp idreducer.cpp
Java idmapper.java idreducer.java

For example, you could enter a small amount of input data that you expect your mapper to produce, such as the TAB-separated key-value pairs listed above from using the identity reducer. If you then use the identity mapper idmapper.py with the word-count reducer wcreducer.py you should get the following output, which we would expect from each stage working:

Blue 2
fish, 2
fish. 1
Fish, 2
Fish. 1
One 1
Red 1
Two 2

Note: Use a TAB character to separate the key and value in the input lines above. To keep a test case around, it is easier to enter your data in an editor, then cut and paste to enter that data in the text box. Alternatively, you can”Upload” a file that contains the data.

  • Unfortunately, the current WMR system does not provide very useful error messages in many cases. For example, if there’s an error in your Python code, no clue about that error can be passed along in the current system.

  • In order to test or debug a mapper and reducer, you can use the Test Button at the bottom of the WMR web page. The job output from this choice shows you what both the mapper and reducer emitted, which can be helpful for debugging your code.

    Note

    Do not use Test for large data, but only to debug your mappers and reducers. This option does not use cluster computing, so it cannot handle large data.

Next Steps

  1. In WMR, you can choose to use your own input data files. Try choosing to ‘browse’ for a file, and using this mobydick.txt as file input.

  2. You have likely noticed that capitalized words are treated separately from lowercase words. Change your mapper to also convert each word to lowercase before checking whether it is in the dictionary.

  3. Also remove punctuation from each word after splitting the line (so all the ‘fish’ variations get counted together).

  4. There are a large number of files of books from Project Gutenberg available on the Hadoop system underlying WebMapReduce. First start by trying this book as an input file by choosing ‘Cluster Path’ as Input in WMR and typing one of these into the text box:

    /shared/gutenberg/WarAndPeace.txt
    /shared/gutenberg/CompleteShakespeare.txt
    /shared/gutenberg/AnnaKarenina.txt

    These books have many lines of text with ‘newline’ chacters at the end of each line. Each of you mapper functions works on one line. Try one of these.

  5. Next, you should try a collection of many books, each of which has no newline characters in them. In this case, each mapper ‘task’ in Hadoop will work on one whole book (your dictionary of words per mapper will be for the whole book, and the mappers will be running on many books at one time). In the Hadoop file system inside WMR we have these datasets available for this:

    ‘Cluster path’ to enter in WMR

    Number of books

    /shared/gutenberg/all_nonl/group10

    2018

    /shared/gutenberg/all_nonl/group11

    294

    /shared/gutenberg/all_nonl/group6

    830

    /shared/gutenberg/all_nonl/group8

    541

    While using many books, it will be useful for you to experiment with the different datasets so that you can get a sense for how much a system like Hadoop can process.

    To do this, it will also be useful for you to save your configuration so that you can use it again with a different number of reducer tasks. Once you have entered your mapper and reducer code, picked the Python3 language, and given your job a descriptive name, choose the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the WMR panel. This will now be a ‘Saved Configuration’ that you can retrieve using the link on the left in the WMR page.

    Try using the smallest set first (group11). Do not enter anything in the map tasks box- notice that the system will choose the same number of mappers as the number of books (this will show up once you submit the job). Also do not enter anything for the number of reduce tasks. With that many books, when the job completes you will see there are many pages of output, and some interesting ‘words’. For the 294 books in group11, note how you obtain several pages of results. You will also notice that the stripping of punctuation isn’t perfect. If you wish to try improving this you could, but it is not necessary.

Additional Notes

It is possible that input data files to mappers may be treated differently than as described in the above example. For example, a mapper function might be used as a second pass by operating on the reducer results from a previous map-reduce cycle. Or the data may be formatted differently than a text file from a novel or poem. These notes pertain to those cases.

In WMR, each line of data is treated as a key-value pair of strings, where the key consists of all characters before the first TAB character in that line, and the value consists of all characters after that first TAB character. Each call of mapper() operates on one line and that function’s two arguments are the key and value from that line.

If there are multiple TAB characters in a line, all TAB characters after the first remain as part of the value argument of mapper().

If there are no TAB characters in a data line (as is the case with all of our fish lines above), an empty string is created for the value and the entire line’s content is treated as the key. This is why the key is split in the mapper shown above.