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Feature Groups Advanced: Tips & Tricks

Learning Objectives​

  • Exporting Feature Groups: Steps to export feature groups using a database connector.
  • Chaining Feature Groups: Techniques for chaining feature groups and managing versions.

Watch the Tutorial​

Feature Groups Advanced: Tips & Tricks​

This guide covers advanced concepts and functionalities for working with Feature Groups in Abacus.AI.

Feature Group Dependencies​

Feature Groups can have dependencies on one another, creating a lineage of data transformations.

How to Visualize Dependencies:

  1. Navigate to the Feature Groups section in your project
  2. Click on the Explore icon for any feature group
  3. View the Feature Group Lineage diagram showing all dependencies between feature groups

Key Considerations:

  • Lineage diagrams can become complex with multiple feature groups and intermediate transformations
  • Abacus.AI tracks changes to both your code and source data automatically
  • When performing actions (e.g., training a model), Abacus always uses the latest version of your feature groups
  • Even if intermediate feature groups appear not materialized, Abacus applies the correct transformations under the hood

Feature Group History (Version Control)​

Feature Group History provides version control for your feature groups, allowing you to track changes over time.

How to Access Feature Group History:

  1. Navigate to the Feature Groups page
  2. Click on a specific feature group
  3. Scroll down to Feature Group History
  4. View different versions of the feature group's code with highlighted changes

What You Can See:

  • All changes made to the code over time
  • Version-by-version comparison of transformations
  • Historical snapshots of your feature group configurations

Common Transformations (Actions Button)​

The Actions button provides quick access to common transformations and operations without writing custom code.

How to Access Actions:

  1. Open a feature group's Detail page
  2. Click the Actions button
  3. Select from various common transformations and general actions

Benefits:

  • Saves time and effort by providing pre-built transformations
  • Eliminates the need to write custom code for common operations
  • Streamlines dataset manipulation workflows

Exporting and Importing Feature Group Schemas​

You can export and import schemas to copy feature types and mappings between feature groups.

What Gets Copied:

  • Feature types
  • Feature mappings

When to Use:

  • When you need to replicate a schema from one feature group to another
  • To avoid manually recreating feature configurations
  • To maintain consistency across similar feature groups

How to Export/Import Schema:

  1. Navigate to the feature group you want to copy from
  2. Use the export schema functionality
  3. Import the schema into the target feature group

Exporting Feature Groups Outside the Platform​

There are two methods to export feature groups to external databases or storage.

Method 1: Direct Export of Specific Version​

Steps:

  1. Go to the feature group's Details page
  2. Scroll down to the individual version of the feature group
  3. Click Export
  4. Choose one of the available connectors
  5. Select the destination table in your database
  6. Map features to the output table columns (features don't need to map one-to-one)

Key Features:

  • Export a specific version of your feature group
  • Flexible feature mapping to destination tables
  • Works with any table that has appropriate feature types

Method 2: Scheduled Export (Cron Job)​

Steps:

  1. Set up a cron job for the feature group export
  2. Configure the schedule for automatic exports
  3. Abacus.AI will materialize and export the latest version on schedule

Key Features:

  • Automatic export on a defined schedule
  • Always uses the latest version of your data
  • Built-in safety measure: skips export if no data changes have occurred
  • Prevents duplication in the export table
  • Can manually override the automatic check by clicking Manual Run

Considerations:

  • The system automatically detects when data hasn't changed and skips unnecessary exports
  • This prevents redundant exports and saves resources
  • Manual run option available when you need to force an export regardless of changes