__scatter__ property

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Stephen Johnson

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Jan 11, 2011, 12:32:38 PM1/11/11
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Checking my datastore statistics today I noticed that a new property
has magically appeared named __scatter__ of type ShortBlob. I don't
have any property defined with this name and it has the App Engine
format of __xyz__ naming so I'm assuming it's something Google has
introduced. However, this is a little disconcerting that it is showing
up in datastore statistics and no mention of this has been provided by
google. Also, it doesn't show up in the datastore viewere. Is anyone
else seeing this magic property? Should I be concerned? Anyone know
it's purpose?

Ikai Lan (Google)

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Jan 11, 2011, 1:42:24 PM1/11/11
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It's a property used by the Mapper API:


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Stephen Johnson

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Jan 11, 2011, 2:06:32 PM1/11/11
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Thanks Ikai,
I've been using mapreduce for a long time and have never seen properties added to our own entities like that. I'll take a look and see what it's being used for so I understand it better and if this side-effect is documented anywhere since it is strange and a little disconcerting to see unknown properties popping up on your own entities.
Thanks,
Steve

Ikai Lan (Google)

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Jan 11, 2011, 3:29:58 PM1/11/11
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The scatter property is being used to better distribute work across different worker shards. Prior to the scatter property, there were several incidents where work was unevenly distributed across tasks.


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Ikai Lan 
Developer Programs Engineer, Google App Engine



frew

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Jan 11, 2011, 3:42:15 PM1/11/11
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As Ikai said, this was added in support of making mapper more
efficient. It's supposed to be completely invisible, so its visibility
is a bug. Can you let me know where you're seeing it (admin console?
API?) and your appid? Also, in case you're worried, Google is picking
up the bill for this property, so it shouldn't affect your storage
costs any.

Thanks
-Fred

On Jan 11, 12:29 pm, "Ikai Lan (Google)" <ikai.l+gro...@google.com>
wrote:
> The scatter property is being used to better distribute work across
> different worker shards. Prior to the scatter property, there were several
> incidents where work was unevenly distributed across tasks.
>
> --
> Ikai Lan
> Developer Programs Engineer, Google App Engine
> Blogger:http://googleappengine.blogspot.com
> Reddit:http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine
> Twitter:http://twitter.com/app_engine
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Stephen Johnson <onepagewo...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Thanks Ikai,
> > I've been using mapreduce for a long time and have never seen properties
> > added to our own entities like that. I'll take a look and see what it's
> > being used for so I understand it better and if this side-effect is
> > documented anywhere since it is strange and a little disconcerting to see
> > unknown properties popping up on your own entities.
> > Thanks,
> > Steve
>
> > On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Ikai Lan (Google) <
> > ikai.l+gro...@google.com <ikai.l%2Bgro...@google.com>> wrote:
>
> >> It's a property used by the Mapper API:
>
> >>http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=__scatter__+package:http://appengi....googlecode\.com&origq=__scatter__&btnG=Search+Trunk<http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=__scatter__+package:http://appengi...>
>
> >> --
> >> Ikai Lan
> >> Developer Programs Engineer, Google App Engine
> >> Blogger:http://googleappengine.blogspot.com
> >> Reddit:http://www.reddit.com/r/appengine
> >> Twitter:http://twitter.com/app_engine
>
> >> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Stephen Johnson <onepagewo...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>> Checking my datastore statistics today I noticed that a new property
> >>> has magically appeared named __scatter__ of type ShortBlob. I don't
> >>> have any property defined with this name and it has the App Engine
> >>> format of __xyz__ naming so I'm assuming it's something Google has
> >>> introduced. However, this is a little disconcerting that it is showing
> >>> up in datastore statistics and no mention of this has been provided by
> >>> google. Also, it doesn't show up in the datastore viewere. Is anyone
> >>> else seeing this magic property? Should I be concerned? Anyone know
> >>> it's purpose?
>
> >>> --
> >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> >>> "Google App Engine" group.
> >>> To post to this group, send email to google-a...@googlegroups.com.
> >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
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> >>> .
> >>> For more options, visit this group at
> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
>
> >>   --
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>
> >  --
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> > .

Stephen Johnson

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Jan 11, 2011, 4:22:55 PM1/11/11
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Hi Fred,
I can see it when I go to Datastore Statistics page and choose an individual entity. On about half of my entities I can see the property and half I don't see the property. The first four of my entities alphabetically have it and the fifth doesn't. appid is my-lms-test
Steve

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frew

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Jan 11, 2011, 4:58:41 PM1/11/11
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Oh yeah, I see it now. I'll get it fixed.

On Jan 11, 1:22 pm, Stephen Johnson <onepagewo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Fred,
> I can see it when I go to Datastore Statistics page and choose an individual
> entity. On about half of my entities I can see the property and half I don't
> see the property. The first four of my entities alphabetically have it and
> the fifth doesn't. appid is my-lms-test
> Steve
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 1:42 PM, frew <f...@google.com> wrote:
> > As Ikai said, this was added in support of making mapper more
> > efficient. It's supposed to be completely invisible, so its visibility
> > is a bug. Can you let me know where you're seeing it (admin console?
> > API?) and your appid? Also, in case you're worried, Google is picking
> > up the bill for this property, so it shouldn't affect your storage
> > costs any.
>
> > Thanks
> > -Fred
>
> > On Jan 11, 12:29 pm, "Ikai Lan (Google)" <ikai.l+gro...@google.com<ikai.l%2Bgro...@google.com>
> > ikai.l%2Bgro...@google.com <ikai.l%252Bgro...@google.com>>> wrote:
>
> > > >> It's a property used by the Mapper API:
>
> >http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=__scatter__+package:http://appengi....com&origq=__scatter__&btnG=Search+Trunk<http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=__scatter__+package:http://appengi...>
> > > >>> google-appengi...@googlegroups.com<google-appengine%2Bunsubscrib e...@googlegroups.com><google-appengine%2Bunsubscrib
> > e...@googlegroups.com>
> > > >>> .
> > > >>> For more options, visit this group at
> > > >>>http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
>
> > > >>   --
> > > >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > Groups
> > > >> "Google App Engine" group.
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> > > >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
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> > e...@googlegroups.com>
> > > >> .
> > > >> For more options, visit this group at
> > > >>http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
>
> > > >  --
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> > .
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Stephen Johnson

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Jan 11, 2011, 5:02:23 PM1/11/11
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Cool. And thx for the quick responses!

César de Tassis Filho

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Jan 12, 2011, 5:22:26 AM1/12/11
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Hi.

 
I can see __scatter__ property when I go to Datastore Statistics too in most of my applications. In addition, the same day I started seeing that property in stats GAE started showing Datastore Statistics in apps that had, in the past, data stored but doesn't have anymore (like "ctassisf" AppID). Is this a bug too?

Thanks!

Jayesh

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Jan 16, 2011, 11:00:47 PM1/16/11
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__scatter__ also shows up in the autogenerated bulkloader.yaml file

When I downloaded the data, in the output xml the __scatter__ field
was left empty and when I tried to import it into my dev server it
gave the error

BadPropertyError: __scatter__ is a reserved property name.

--
Jayesh

On Jan 12, 3:22 pm, "C?sar de Tassis Filho" <ctass...@gmail.com>
wrote:
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