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Airflow vs Digdag: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Airflow and Digdag

Airflow and Digdag are both workflow management platforms but they have key differences that set them apart from each other.

  1. Task Dependency: Airflow uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) to represent dependencies between tasks, which allows for complex workflows with multiple task dependencies. Digdag, on the other hand, uses a simpler dependency model with one-to-one dependencies between tasks. This makes Airflow more suited for complex workflows with intricate dependencies.

  2. Execution Model: Airflow follows a pull-based execution model, where tasks are executed by workers that periodically poll the Airflow scheduler for new tasks. Digdag, on the other hand, uses a push-based execution model where tasks are executed immediately after their dependencies are satisfied. This makes Digdag more suited for real-time processing and low-latency workflows.

  3. Scripting Language: Airflow uses Python as its scripting language, allowing for a wide range of customizations and integrations with existing Python libraries and frameworks. Digdag, on the other hand, uses a proprietary YAML-based language for defining workflows, which limits the customizability and integrations compared to Airflow.

  4. Workflow Visualization: Airflow provides a web-based user interface that allows users to visualize the workflow dependencies and monitor the execution status of tasks. Digdag, on the other hand, lacks a dedicated web-based UI for workflow visualization and monitoring, making it less user-friendly for visualizing complex workflows.

  5. Community Ecosystem: Airflow has a larger and more active community compared to Digdag, with a vast number of plugins, integrations, and community-contributed resources available. Digdag's community ecosystem is relatively smaller, limiting the availability of plugins and integrations compared to Airflow.

  6. Maturity and Scalability: Airflow is a more mature and widely adopted workflow management system with a proven track record of large-scale deployments. Digdag, on the other hand, is a relatively newer and less mature platform with limited scalability features compared to Airflow.

In summary, Airflow and Digdag have key differences in their task dependency models, execution models, scripting languages, workflow visualization capabilities, community ecosystems, and maturity and scalability levels.

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Apache SparkApache Spark

I am so confused. I need a tool that will allow me to go to about 10 different URLs to get a list of objects. Those object lists will be hundreds or thousands in length. I then need to get detailed data lists about each object. Those detailed data lists can have hundreds of elements that could be map/reduced somehow. My batch process dies sometimes halfway through which means hours of processing gone, i.e. time wasted. I need something like a directed graph that will keep results of successful data collection and allow me either pragmatically or manually to retry the failed ones some way (0 - forever) times. I want it to then process all the ones that have succeeded or been effectively ignored and load the data store with the aggregation of some couple thousand data-points. I know hitting this many endpoints is not a good practice but I can't put collectors on all the endpoints or anything like that. It is pretty much the only way to get the data.

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Gilroy Gordon
Solution Architect at IGonics Limited · | 2 upvotes · 277.8K views
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For a non-streaming approach:

You could consider using more checkpoints throughout your spark jobs. Furthermore, you could consider separating your workload into multiple jobs with an intermittent data store (suggesting cassandra or you may choose based on your choice and availability) to store results , perform aggregations and store results of those.

Spark Job 1 - Fetch Data From 10 URLs and store data and metadata in a data store (cassandra) Spark Job 2..n - Check data store for unprocessed items and continue the aggregation

Alternatively for a streaming approach: Treating your data as stream might be useful also. Spark Streaming allows you to utilize a checkpoint interval - https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/streaming-programming-guide.html#checkpointing

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Pros of Airflow
Pros of Digdag
  • 53
    Features
  • 14
    Task Dependency Management
  • 12
    Beautiful UI
  • 12
    Cluster of workers
  • 10
    Extensibility
  • 6
    Open source
  • 5
    Complex workflows
  • 5
    Python
  • 3
    Good api
  • 3
    Apache project
  • 3
    Custom operators
  • 2
    Dashboard
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    Cons of Airflow
    Cons of Digdag
    • 2
      Observability is not great when the DAGs exceed 250
    • 2
      Running it on kubernetes cluster relatively complex
    • 2
      Open source - provides minimum or no support
    • 1
      Logical separation of DAGs is not straight forward
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      What is Airflow?

      Use Airflow to author workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of tasks. The Airflow scheduler executes your tasks on an array of workers while following the specified dependencies. Rich command lines utilities makes performing complex surgeries on DAGs a snap. The rich user interface makes it easy to visualize pipelines running in production, monitor progress and troubleshoot issues when needed.

      What is Digdag?

      It is a simple tool that helps you to build, run, schedule, and monitor complex pipelines of tasks. It handles dependency resolution so that tasks run in series or in parallel.

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      What are some alternatives to Airflow and Digdag?
      Luigi
      It is a Python module that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs. It handles dependency resolution, workflow management, visualization etc. It also comes with Hadoop support built in.
      Apache NiFi
      An easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data. It supports powerful and scalable directed graphs of data routing, transformation, and system mediation logic.
      Jenkins
      In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.
      AWS Step Functions
      AWS Step Functions makes it easy to coordinate the components of distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows. Building applications from individual components that each perform a discrete function lets you scale and change applications quickly.
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