Question

While implementing solution provided at How to optimize a group by statement in PIG latin? I found that all the rows with one null column is dropped, which is expected behavior in Pig. I was wondering if the below code would work?

A = B join by ( Bcol1 is null?'UNK',Bcol2 is null?'UNK',Bcol2 is null?999),
C join by ( Ccol1 is null?'UNK',Ccol2 is null?'UNK',Ccol2 is null?999)

I am getting some parsing error.

Answer 1

PIG is a data flow scripting language and adding extra FOREACH GENERATE which fix the null will not cause extra map reduce jobs.

B = foreach B generate ....., (Bcol1 is null) ? 'UNK' : Bcol1 as Bcol1, (Bcol2 is null) ? 'UNK' : Bcol2 as Bcol2, (Bcol3 is null) ? 999 : Bcol3;
C = foreach C generate ....., (Ccol1 is null) ? 'UNK' : Ccol1 as Ccol1, (Ccol2 is null) ? 'UNK' : Ccol2 as Ccol2, (Ccol3 is null) ? 999 : Ccol3;
A = join B by (Bcol1, Bcol2, Bcol3), C by (Ccol1, Ccol2, Ccol3);