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Feature Table

Step-by-step tutorial on creating a feature table model.

danger
Feature table model is now deprecated. You can use the Feature View model to extract the required features for an entity from your data warehouse.

Once you have done identity stitching to unify the identity of your users across all the cross-platforms, you can evaluate and maintain the required features/traits for each identified user in a feature table.

This guide provides a detailed walkthrough on how to use a PB project and create output tables in a warehouse for a feature table model.

Prerequisites

Familiarize yourself with:

  • A basic Profile Builder project by following the Profile Builder CLI steps.
  • Structure of a Profile Builder project and the parameters used in different files.
  • Identity Stitching model as feature table reuses its output to extract the required features/traits.

Sample GitHub projects

Sample project

This sample project uses the output of an identity stitching model as an input to create a feature table. The following sections describe how to define your PB project files:

Project detail

The pb_project.yaml file defines the project details such as name, schema version, connection name and the entities which represent different identifiers.

You can define all the identifiers from different input sources you want to stitch together as a user_main_id:

warning
You need to add main_id to the list only if you have defined main_id_type: main_id in the ID stitcher buildspec.
# Project name
name: sample_id_stitching
# Project's yaml schema version
schema_version: 84
# Warehouse connection
connection: test
# Folder containing models
model_folders:
  - models
# Entities in this project and their ids.
entities:
  - name: user
    id_types:
      - main_id # You need to add ``main_id`` to the list only if you have defined ``main_id_type: main_id`` in the id stitcher buildspec.
      - user_id # one of the identifier from your data source.
      - email
id_types:
  - name: user_id
  - name: email
    filters:
      - type: include
        regex: ".+@.+"
      - type: exclude
        value: "test@company.com"

Input

The input file file includes the input table references and corresponding SQL for the above-mentioned entities:

inputs:
- name: rsIdentifies
  contract: # constraints that a model adheres to
    is_optional: false
    is_event_stream: true
    with_entity_ids:
      - user
    with_columns:
      - name: timestamp
      - name: user_id
      - name: anonymous_id
      - name: email
  app_defaults:
    table: rudder_events_production.web.identifies # one of the WH table RudderStack generates when processing identify or track events.
    occurred_at_col: timestamp
    ids:
      - select: "user_id" # kind of identity sql to pick this column from above table.
        type: user_id
        entity: user # as defined in project file
        to_default_stitcher: true
      - select: "anonymous_id"
        type: anonymous_id
        entity: user
        to_default_stitcher: true
      - select: "lower(email)" # can use sql.
        type: email
        entity: user
        to_default_stitcher: true
- name: rsTracks
  contract:
    is_optional: false
    is_event_stream: true
    with_entity_ids:
      - user
    with_columns:
      - name: timestamp
      - name: user_id
      - name: anonymous_id
  app_defaults:
    table: rudder_events_production.web.tracks # another table in WH maintained by RudderStack processing track events.
    occurred_at_col: timestamp
    ids:
      - select: "user_id"
        type: user_id
        entity: user
        to_default_stitcher: true
      - select: "anonymous_id"
        type: anonymous_id
        entity: user
        to_default_stitcher: true

Model

Profiles Feature Table model lets you define the specific features/traits you want to evaluate from the huge spread of scattered data in your warehouse tables.

A sample profiles.yaml file specifying a feature table model (user_profile):

models:
  - name: user_profile
    model_type: feature_table_model
    model_spec:
      entity_key: user
      features:
        - user_lifespan
        - days_active
        - min_num_c_rank_num_b_partition
var_groups:
  - name: user_vars
    entity_key: user
    vars:
      - entity_var:
          name: first_seen
          select: min(timestamp::date)
          from: inputs/rsTracks
          where: properties_country is not null and properties_country != ''
      - entity_var:
          name: last_seen
          select: max(timestamp::date)
          from: inputs/rsTracks
      - entity_var:
          name: user_lifespan
          select: '{{user.last_seen}} - {{user.first_seen}}'
          description: Life Time Value of a customer
      - entity_var:
          name: days_active
          select: count(distinct timestamp::date)
          from: inputs/rsTracks
          description: No. of days a customer was active
      - entity_var:
          name: campaign_source
          default_value: "'organic'"
      - entity_var:
          name: user_rank
          default_value: -1
      - entity_var:
          name: campaign_source_first_touch
          select: first_value(context_campaign_source)
          window:
            order_by:
              - timestamp asc
          from: inputs/rsIdentifies
          where: context_campaign_source is not null and context_campaign_source != ''
      - input_var:
          name: num_c_rank_num_b_partition
          select: rank()
          from: inputs/tbl_c
          default_value: -1
          window:
            partition_by:
              - "{{tbl_c}}.num_b"
            order_by:
              - "{{tbl_c}}.num_c asc"
          where: "{{tbl_c}}.num_b >= 10"
      - entity_var:
          name: min_num_c_rank_num_b_partition
          select: min(num_c_rank_num_b_partition)
          from: inputs/tbl_c
      - entity_var:
          name: first_bill
          select: min({{tbl_billing.Var("payment")}})
          from: inputs/tbl_billing
          column_data_type: '{{warehouse.DataType("float")}}'
Model specification fields
FieldData typeDescription
entity_keyStringSpecifies the relevant entity from your input.yaml file.
featuresStringSpecifies the list of name in entity_var, that must act as a feature.

entity_var

The entity_var field defines the features which act as an input for the feature table model. This variable stores the data temporarily, however, you can choose to store its data permanently by specifying the name in it as a feature in the features key.

FieldData typeDescription
nameStringName of the entity_var to identify it uniquely.
selectStringColumn name/value you want to select from the table. This defines the actual value that will be stored in the variable. You can use simple SQL expressions or select an entity_var as {{entityName.Var(\"entity_var\")}}. It has to be an aggregate operation that ensures the output is a unique value for a given main_id. For example: min(timestamp), count(*), sum(amount) etc. This holds true even when a window function (optional) is used. For example:: first_value(), last_value() etc are valid while rank(), row_number(), etc. are not valid and give unpredictable results.
fromListReference to the source table from where data is to be fetched. You can either refer to another model from the same YAML or some other table specified in input YAML.
whereStringAny filters you want to apply on the input table before selecting a value. This must be SQL compatible and should consider the data type of the table.
default_valueStringDefault value in case no data matches the filter. When defining default values, make sure to enclose the string values in single quotes followed by double quotes to avoid SQL failure. However, you can use the non-string values without any quotes.
descriptionStringTextual description of the entity_var.
windowObjectSpecifies the window function. Window functions in SQL usually have both partition_by and order_by properties. But for entity_var, partition_by is added with main_id as default; so, adding partition_by manually is not supported. If you need partitioning on other columns too, check out input_var where partition_by on arbitrary and multiple columns is supported.
column_data_typeString(Optional) Data type for the entity_var. Supported data types are: integer, variant, float, varchar, text, and timestamp.

input_var

The syntax of input_var is similar to entity_var, with the only difference that instead of each value being associated to a row of the feature table, it’s associated with a row of the specified input. While you can think of an entity_var as adding a helper column to the feature table, you can consider an input_var as adding a helper column to the input.

FieldData typeDescription
nameStringName to store the retrieved data.
selectStringData to be stored in the name.
fromListReference to the source table from where data is to be fetched.
whereString(Optional) Applies conditions for fetching data.
default_valueString(Optional) Default value for any entity for which the calculated value would otherwise be NULL.
descriptionString(Optional) Textual description.
column_data_typeString(Optional) Data type for the input_var. Supported data types are: integer, variant, float, varchar, text, and timestamp.
windowObject(Optional) Specifies a window over which the value should be calculated.

window

FieldData typeDescription
partition_byString(Optional) List of SQL expressions to use in partitioning the data.
order_byString(Optional) List of SQL expressions to use in ordering the data.

In window option, main_id is not added by default, it can be any arbitrary list of columns from the input table. So if a feature should be partitioned by main_id, you must add it in the partition_by key.

Output

After running the project, you can view the generated material tables.

A sample output containing the results in Snowflake:

Generated table (Snowflake)

Partial feature tables

Partial feature tables are created when only a few input sources are available.

For example, lets say that you import a library package and some of the input models assumed in the package are not present in your warehouse.

When you remap some of these input models to nil, those inputs and the features directly or indirectly dependent upon those inputs are disabled. In such cases, a partial feature table is created from the rest of the available inputs. Similarly, ID stitcher also runs even if a few of the edge sources are not present in the warehouse or remapped to nil.

Feature table for cohort

To create feature table for a specific cohort, you can pass the cohort’s path in the entity_cohort field:

- name: us_users_features
  model_type: feature_table_model
  model_spec:
    entity_cohort: models/knownUsUsers
    time_grain: "day"
    features:
      - has_credit_card

To create feature tables for the entire set of an entity’s instance, specify the entity_key:

- name: all_users_features
  model_type: feature_table_model
  model_spec:
    entity_key: user
    time_grain: "day"
    features:
      - max_timestamp

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