Ibis: an overview

Cody Peterson

composable data systems

A Python perspective

“The Road to Composable Data Systems: Thoughts on the Last 15 Years and the Future” by Wes McKinney:

pandas solved many problems that database systems also solve, but almost no one in the data science ecosystem had the expertise to build a data frame library using database techniques. Eagerly-evaluated APIs (as opposed to “lazy” ones) make it more difficult to do efficient “query” planning and execution. Data interoperability with other systems is always going to be painful…

A Python perspective

“The Road to Composable Data Systems: Thoughts on the Last 15 Years and the Future” by Wes McKinney:

…unless faster, more efficient “standards” for interoperability are created.

Layers

“The Composable Codex” by Voltron Data:

layers

Future

“The Composable Codex” by Voltron Data:

future

Why composable data systems?

Efficiency:

  • time
  • money
  • data mesh
  • engineering productivity
  • avoid vendor lock-in

How can you implement it?

Choose your stack:

UI:

  • Ibis (Python)
  • dplyr (R)
  • SQL
  • …

Execution engine:

  • DuckDB
  • DataFusion
  • Polars
  • Spark
  • Trino
  • ClickHouse
  • Snowflake
  • Databricks
  • Theseus
  • …

Storage:

  • Iceberg
  • Delta Lake
  • Hudi
  • Hive-partitioned Parquet files
  • …

Choose your stack (there’s more)

Additionally, choose tools for:

Orchestration:

  • Airflow
  • Prefect
  • Dagster
  • Kedro
  • SQLMesh
  • dbt
  • …

Ingestion:

  • dlt
  • Airbyte
  • requests
  • Ibis
  • …

Visualization:

  • Altair
  • plotnine
  • Plotly
  • seaborn
  • matplotlib
  • …

Dashboarding:

  • Streamlit
  • Quarto dashboards
  • Shiny for Python
  • Dash
  • …

Testing:

  • Great Expectations
  • Pandera
  • Pytest
  • assert statements
  • …

CLI:

  • Click
  • Typer
  • argparse
  • …

what is Ibis?

Ibis is a Python library for:

  • exploratory data analysis (EDA)
  • analytics
  • data engineering
  • machine learning
  • building your own library
  • …

development to production with the same API

Getting started…

import ibis

ibis.options.interactive = True
t = ibis.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")
t.head(3)
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

One API, 20+ backends

con = ibis.connect("duckdb://")
t = con.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")
t.head(3)
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

t.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=t.count()).order_by("count")
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

con = ibis.connect("polars://")
t = con.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")
t.head(3)
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

t.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=t.count()).order_by("count")
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

con = ibis.connect("datafusion://")
t = con.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")
t.head(3)
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

t.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=t.count()).order_by("count")
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

con = ibis.connect("pyspark://")
t = con.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")
t.head(3)
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

t.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=t.count()).order_by("count")
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

How it works

Ibis compiles down to SQL or dataframe code:

SQL + Python: better together

For SQL backends, inspect the SQL generated by Ibis:

g = t.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=t.count()).order_by(ibis.desc("count"))
ibis.to_sql(g)
SELECT
  *
FROM (
  SELECT
    "t0"."species",
    "t0"."island",
    COUNT(*) AS "count"
  FROM "penguins" AS "t0"
  GROUP BY
    1,
    2
) AS "t1"
ORDER BY
  "t1"."count" DESC

SQL + Python: better together

For SQL backends, mix SQL and Python:

sql = """
SELECT
  species,
  island,
  count(*) as count
FROM penguins
GROUP BY 1, 2
"""
t.sql(sql)
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

SQL + Python: better together

For SQL backends, mix SQL and Python:

sql = """
SELECT
  species,
  island,
  count(*) as count
FROM penguins
GROUP BY 1, 2
"""
t.sql(sql).order_by(ibis.desc("count"))
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species   ┃ island    ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string    │ string    │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Gentoo    │ Biscoe    │   124 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream     │    68 │
│ Adelie    │ Dream     │    56 │
│ Adelie    │ Torgersen │    52 │
│ Adelie    │ Biscoe    │    44 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

demo

ibis-analytics

Analyzing 10M+ rows from 4+ data sources.

why

Dataframe lore

Dataframes first appeared in the S programming language (in 1991!), then evolved into the R programming language.

Then pandas perfected the dataframe in Python…or did it?

Since, dozens of Python dataframes libraries have come and gone…

The pandas API remains the de facto standard for dataframes in Python (alongside PySpark), but it doesn’t scale.

This leads to data scientists frequently “throwing their work over the wall” to data engineers and ML engineers.

But what if there were a new standard?

Ibis origins

from Apache Arrow and the “10 Things I Hate About pandas” by Wes McKinney

…in 2015, I started the Ibis project…to create a pandas-friendly deferred expression system for static analysis and compilation [of] these types of [query planned, multicore execution] operations. Since an efficient multithreaded in-memory engine for pandas was not available when I started Ibis, I instead focused on building compilers for SQL engines (Impala, PostgreSQL, SQLite), similar to the R dplyr package. Phillip Cloud from the pandas core team has been actively working on Ibis with me for quite a long time.

Two world problem

SQL:

Python:

Two world problem

SQL:

  • databases & tables

Python:

  • files & dataframes

Two world problem

SQL:

  • databases & tables
  • analytics

Python:

  • files & dataframes
  • data science

Two world problem

SQL:

  • databases & tables
  • analytics
  • metrics

Python:

  • files & dataframes
  • data science
  • statistics

Two world problem

SQL:

  • databases & tables
  • analytics
  • metrics
  • dashboards

Python:

  • files & dataframes
  • data science
  • statistics
  • notebooks

Two world problem

Python:

  • files & dataframes
  • data science
  • statistics
  • notebooks

SQL:

  • databases & tables
  • analytics
  • metrics
  • dashboards

Ibis bridges the gap.

Python dataframe history

  • pandas (2008): dataframes in Python
  • Spark (2009): distributed dataframes with PySpark
  • Dask (2014): distributed pandas dataframes
  • Vaex (2014): multicore dataframes in Python via C++
  • Ibis (2015): backend-agnostic dataframes in Python
  • cuDF (2017): pandas API on GPUs
  • Modin (2018): pandas API on Ray/Dask
  • Koalas (2019): pandas API on Spark, later renamed “pandas API on Spark”
  • Polars (2020): multicore dataframes in Python via Rust
  • Ibis (2022): Ibis invested in heavily by Voltron Data
  • Snowpark Python (2022): PySpark-like dataframes on Snowflake
  • Daft (2022): distributed dataframes in Python via Rust
  • BigQuery DataFrames (2023): pandas API on Google BigQuery (via Ibis!)
  • Snowpark pandas API (2024): pandas API on Snowflake
  • SQLFrame (2024): backend-agnostic dataframes in Python (PySpark API)
  • DataFusion dataframes (2024): multicore dataframes in Python via Rust

Obligatory standards xkcd

standards

Standards and composability

All Python dataframe libraries that are not Ibis (or SQLFrame) lock you into an execution engine.

Good standards are composable and adopted by competitors.

Python dataframe history (aside)

We see three approaches:

pandas clones:

  • Modin
  • pandas API on Spark
    • formerly known as Koalas
  • cuDF
  • Dask (sort of)
  • BigQuery DataFrames
  • Snowpark pandas API

PySpark clones:

  • SQLFrame
  • Snowpark Python (sort of)
  • DuckDB Spark API
  • SQLGlot Spark API

something else:

  • Ibis
  • Polars
  • Daft
  • DataFusion

Database history

  • they got faster

Ibis brings the best of databases to dataframes.

DuckDB

import ibis

con = ibis.duckdb.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

An embeddable, zero-dependency, C++ SQL database engine.

DataFusion

import ibis

con = ibis.datafusion.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A Rust SQL query engine.

ClickHouse

import ibis

con = ibis.clickhouse.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A C++ column-oriented database management system.

Polars

import ibis

con = ibis.polars.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A Rust DataFrame library.

BigQuery

import ibis

con = ibis.bigquery.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A serverless, highly scalable, and cost-effective cloud data warehouse.

Snowflake

import ibis

con = ibis.snowflake.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A cloud data platform.

Oracle

import ibis

con = ibis.oracle.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A relational database management system.

Spark

import ibis

con = ibis.pyspark.connect(session)
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A unified analytics engine for large-scale data processing.

Trino

import ibis

con = ibis.trino.connect()
penguins = con.table("penguins")
penguins.group_by(["species", "island"]).agg(penguins.count().name("count"))

A distributed SQL query engine.

…and more!

  • SQLite
  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • MSSQL
  • Druid
  • pandas
  • Impala
  • Dask

New backends are easy to add!*

*usually

how

Try it out now!

Install:

pip install 'ibis-framework[duckdb,examples]'

Then run:

import ibis

ibis.options.interactive = True

t = ibis.examples.penguins.fetch()
t
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island    ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex    ┃ year  ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string  │ string    │ float64        │ float64       │ int64             │ int64       │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.1 │          18.7 │               181 │        3750 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.5 │          17.4 │               186 │        3800 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           40.3 │          18.0 │               195 │        3250 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           NULL │          NULL │              NULL │        NULL │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           36.7 │          19.3 │               193 │        3450 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.3 │          20.6 │               190 │        3650 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           38.9 │          17.8 │               181 │        3625 │ female │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           39.2 │          19.6 │               195 │        4675 │ male   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           34.1 │          18.1 │               193 │        3475 │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ Adelie  │ Torgersen │           42.0 │          20.2 │               190 │        4250 │ NULL   │  2007 │
│ …       │ …         │              … │             … │                 … │           … │ …      │     … │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘

questions?

the end

https://ibis-project.org