Creating/dropping the namespace doesn't capture committer and author information.

[ajantha-bhat]

Commit log entry: (doesn't contain author and committer info)

[LogEntry{commitMeta=CommitMeta{hash=06f3272a0448bcc177f80313d19b1315973e918637b3bff6c3262b588a25bedf, committer=, author=, allAuthors=[], signedOffBy=null, allSignedOffBy=[], message=delete namespace ns, commitTime=2023-04-05T06:29:58.785Z, authorTime=2023-04-05T06:29:58.785Z, allProperties={}, parentCommitHashes=[]}, additionalParents=[], parentCommitHash=b0911d20316931f42ce9503118f78164771fa00e7edbef4a5f4af5e65bf8ddb0, operations=null},

Should these commits happen from NessieIcebergClient or pass the committer and author info to the server? I am in favour of committing from NessieIcebergClient to have uniform behaviour with other commits.

https://github.com/projectnessie/nessie/blob/ad6d360f5fa57f99e998667d9436fddaf3b11cf0/api/client/src/main/java/org/projectnessie/client/util/v2api/ClientSideCreateNamespace.java#L89-L94

[ajantha-bhat]

cc: @dimas-b, @snazy

[dimas-b]

Normally, committer is derived from AuthN data. Clients cannot set it.

[dimas-b]

IIRC, the Iceberg-side Nessie code should already be setting author data... I may be mistaken, though. @ajantha-bhat : Could you double check?

ClientSideCreateNamespace is more of a backward compatibility fixture to simplify migration from API v1 to v2, IMHO.

Ideally, API v2 clients should use the commitMultipleOperations() method directly in order to create namespaces, and set proper author data.

[ajantha-bhat]

I have mentioned the code snippet above where we are not setting the commit meta with author and other information.

For a normal commit like create table, Iceberg side we add commit meta like this

https://github.com/apache/iceberg/blob/d485cc83ec58bd587fbfaaacebcf624c7f4c44d3/nessie/src/main/java/org/apache/iceberg/nessie/NessieUtil.java#L65-L91

[dimas-b]

Yes, I edited the above comment a bit after posting it :)

[ajantha-bhat]

yes. My question is commitMultipleOperations() is called at client side for create table, commit table, etc.

So, should we also have commitMultipleOperations() to create a namespace at the client side? So, it will also handle the author and committer info.

[dimas-b]

Re: the java client API, it might be worth adding an input method for CommitMeta to CreateNamespaceBuilder and similar builder. The new method can be supported only in API v2 (ignored in v1).

[dimas-b]

So, should we also have commitMultipleOperations() to create a namespace at the client side? So, it will also handle the author and committer info.

This is preferable, I believe. REST API v2 does not have a dedicated endpoint for namespace manipulation. All changes should be done via the commit API, so the less wrappers we have around that, the better, IMHO.

[ajantha-bhat]

Ack, I will take a look at adding commitMultipleOperations() at the client side and cleaning up the code for create/drop namespaces.

[snazy]

What's the status here?

[ajantha-bhat]

I didn't work on it.

@dimas-b, @adutra: Do you like to work on it? If not, I will check it next week.

[adutra]

I can work on it 👍