splinkclickhouse 0.2.3

Clickhouse backend support for Splink

splinkclickhouse

Basic Clickhouse support for use as a backend with the data-linkage and deduplication package Splink.

Supports in-process chDB version or a clickhouse server connected via clickhouse connect.

Installation

You can install the package from github:

# for v0.2.3 - replace with any version you want, or specify a branch after '@'
pip install git+https://github.com/ADBond/splinkclickhouse.git@v0.2.3

Use

chDB

Import ChDBAPI, which accepts a connection from chdb.api:

import splink.comparison_library as cl
from chdb import dbapi
from splink import Linker, SettingsCreator, block_on, splink_datasets

from splinkclickhouse import ChDBAPI

con = dbapi.connect()
db_api = ChDBAPI(con)

df = splink_datasets.fake_1000

settings = SettingsCreator(
    link_type="dedupe_only",
    comparisons=[
        cl.NameComparison("first_name"),
        cl.JaroAtThresholds("surname"),
        cl.DateOfBirthComparison(
            "dob",
            input_is_string=True,
        ),
        cl.DamerauLevenshteinAtThresholds("city").configure(
            term_frequency_adjustments=True
        ),
        cl.EmailComparison("email"),
    ],
    blocking_rules_to_generate_predictions=[
        block_on("first_name", "dob"),
        block_on("surname"),
    ],
)

linker = Linker(df, settings, db_api=db_api)

See Splink documentation for use of the Linker.

Clickhouse server

Import ClickhouseAPI, which accepts a clickhouse_connect client, configured with attributes relevant for your connection:

import clickhouse_connect
import splink.comparison_library as cl
from splink import Linker, SettingsCreator, block_on, splink_datasets

from splinkclickhouse import ClickhouseAPI

df = splink_datasets.fake_1000

conn_atts = {
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 8123,
    "username": "splinkognito",
    "password": "splink123!",
}

db_name = "__temp_splink_db"

default_client = clickhouse_connect.get_client(**conn_atts)
default_client.command(f"CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS {db_name}")
client = clickhouse_connect.get_client(
    **conn_atts,
    database=db_name,
)

db_api = ClickhouseAPI(client)

# can have at most one tf-adjusted comparison, see caveats below
settings = SettingsCreator(
    link_type="dedupe_only",
    comparisons=[
        cl.JaroWinklerAtThresholds("first_name"),
        cl.JaroAtThresholds("surname"),
        cl.DateOfBirthComparison(
            "dob",
            input_is_string=True,
        ),
        cl.DamerauLevenshteinAtThresholds("city").configure(
            term_frequency_adjustments=True
        ),
        cl.JaccardAtThresholds("email"),
    ],
    blocking_rules_to_generate_predictions=[
        block_on("first_name", "dob"),
        block_on("surname"),
    ],
)

linker = Linker(df, settings, db_api=db_api)

See Splink documentation for use of the Linker.

Known issues / caveats

Datetime parsing

Clickhouse offers several different date formats. The basic Date format cannot handle dates before the epoch (1970-01-01), which makes it unsuitable for many use-cases for holding date-of-births.

The parsing function parseDateTime (and variants) which support providing custom formats return a DateTime, which also has the above limited range. In splinkclickhouse we use the function parseDateTime64BestEffortOrNull so that we can use the extended-range DateTime64 data type, which supports dates back to 1900-01-01, but does not allow custom date formats. Currently no DateTime64 equivalent of parseDateTime exists.

If you require different behaviour (for instance if you have an unusual date format and know that you do not need dates outside of the DateTime range) you will either need to derive a new column in your source data, or construct the relevant SQL expression manually.

There is not currently a way in Clickhouse to deal directly with date values before 1900 - if you require such values you will have to manually process these to a different type, and construct the relevant SQL logic.

NULL values in chdb

When passing data into chdb from pandas or pyarrow tables, NULL values in String columns are converted into empty strings, instead of remaining NULL.

For now this is not handled within the package. You can workaround the issue by wrapping column names in NULLIF:

import splink.comparison_level as cl

first_name_comparison = cl.DamerauLevenshteinAtThresholds("NULLIF(first_name, '')")

Term-frequency adjustments

Currently at most one term frequency adjustment can be used with ClickhouseAPI.

This also applies to ChDBAPI but only in debug_mode. With debug_mode off there is no limit on term frequency adjustments.

ClickhouseAPI pandas registration

ClickhouseAPI will allow registration of pandas dataframes, by inferring the types of columns. It currently only does this for string and integer columns, and will always make them Nullable.

If you require other data types, or more fine-grained control, it is recommended to import the data into Clickhouse yourself, and then pass the table name (as a string) to the Linker instead.