René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Cross-implementation conformance: read the Raincloud corpus (247 Vortex files) and publish a compatibility matrix","articleBody":"## Context\n\n@mprammer proposed using [Raincloud](https://github.com/spiraldb/raincloud) as a cross-implementation conformance corpus: ~249 curated real-world datasets, 247 of which are built as both Parquet and Vortex (written by the Vortex Python bindings, currently `vortex-data==0.69.0`). Reading all of them correctly from vortex-java — validated against the Parquet sibling as oracle — would give both projects a real-world compatibility matrix, far stronger evidence than synthetic round-trip fixtures.\n\n## Approach\n\nFor each slug with a Vortex artifact:\n\n1. Build (or pull) the `parquet/\u003cslug\u003e.parquet` + `vortex/\u003cslug\u003e.vortex` pair via the Raincloud pipeline.\n2. Read the `.vortex` with vortex-java (`vortex-cli schema` / `count` / `export`).\n3. Oracle check: compare exported values against the Parquet sibling (pyarrow).\n4. Record per slug: schema parsed / row count / values match / encodings + layouts encountered / failure detail.\n\nOutput: a per-dataset compatibility matrix plus an encoding/layout coverage summary, published under `docs/`.\n\n## Plan\n\n- [x] Proof of concept: 4 small datasets (uci-iris, kepler-exoplanet-search-results, palmer-archipelago-antarctica-penguin-data, countries-of-the-world incl. VARIANT columns) — build, read, compare\n- [x] Conformance harness: scripted runner over any set of built slugs, emitting matrix rows (machine-readable + markdown)\n- [ ] Scale out to the full buildable corpus (small/medium slugs first; large ones — ClickBench, Wikipedia, JSONBench — need multi-hour builds and disk budget)\n- [ ] Publish compatibility matrix + file issues for each gap found (unknown encodings/layouts, value mismatches)\n- [ ] CI story: recurring subset run (blocked on mirror access — see open questions)\n\n## Open questions for @mprammer\n\n- Is there a mirror (`RAINCLOUD_MIRROR`) we could read prepared artifacts from, so CI doesn't rebuild datasets from upstream? Resolution order cache → mirror → build makes this the difference between a download and multi-hour rebuilds.\n- Should the matrix pin the `vortex-data` version per run (files written by 0.69.0 today may use different encodings than future releases)?\n- A few source URLs may have rotted since the last build — want failures reported here or on the Raincloud tracker?\n\n## Progress\n\nResults will be posted as comments on this issue as phases complete.\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/dfa1","@type":"Person","name":"dfa1"},"datePublished":"2026-07-06T18:42:40.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":6},"url":"https://github.com/205/vortex-java/issues/205"}