Apache Hudi: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 3. Writing to Hudi

The write operation is a critical function in any data lakehouse, directly shaping its reliability and performance. A deep understanding of the Hudi writer’s internal behavior—and which of its many features to leverage for your specific use case—is therefore essential. Building upon the foundational concepts of table layouts, timeline structures, and table type trade-offs from Chapter 2, this chapter combines deep dives on internals and usage examples, serving as your go-to guide to understanding write operations in Apache Hudi.

This chapter is organized into three sections to provide a comprehensive exploration of Hudi’s write capabilities. “Breaking Down the Write Flow” dissects the end-to-end Hudi write process. We will trace each step of the journey, from data preparation to the final transactional commit, revealing the internal mechanics that ensure data correctness and efficiency.

To ground our discussion in practical application, “Exploring Write Operations” introduces a real-world use case for a data provider, DataCentral, Inc., which specializes in analyzing sensor data from millions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. We will demonstrate all of Hudi’s write operations—including upsert, delete, insert, and bulk_insert—showing you how to solve common data manipulation challenges in a real-world context.

The power and efficiency of Hudi’s core write operations stem from several important features designed to handle complex lakehouse data patterns. ...