spark: Disable CLL for LogicalRDD plans#4329
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mobuchowski merged 1 commit intoOpenLineage:mainfrom Feb 11, 2026
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Column-level lineage produced for Spark LogicalRDD plans cannot be trusted. While the underlying data source can still be identified, all transformation context—both before converting a DataFrame to an RDD and during RDD-level operations—is lost. LogicalRDD only retains the final schema, with no expression trees or derivation history. As a result, the lineage may accidentally be correct if no schema-changing transformations occurred, but may also be incorrect when columns are derived, renamed, or otherwise modified. Since there is no way to distinguish these cases, the lineage becomes inherently unverifiable and potentially misleading. To avoid generating incorrect metadata, column-level lineage extraction is disabled for LogicalRDD nodes. Signed-off-by: kchledowski <github@chledowski.com>
mobuchowski
approved these changes
Feb 11, 2026
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One-line summary for changelog:
Disable Column-Level Lineage extraction for Spark LogicalRDD plans to prevent incorrect lineage caused by lost schema and transformation context.
Meaningful description
Column-Level Lineage generated from Spark
LogicalRDDplans is currentlyunreliable. Although OpenLineage can still identify the underlying data
source associated with an RDD, all transformation context is lost —
both:
When Spark constructs a
LogicalRDD, it contains only the final rowschema, without any expression trees, renames, derived columns, or
projections that produced it. As a result, OpenLineage cannot determine
whether the output schema corresponds directly to the source schema or
has been altered by transformations.
This leads to the situation where:
occurred,
during RDD processing,
Therefore, any column-level lineage produced from a
LogicalRDDisinherently unverifiable and may be misleading.
Example illustrating the problem
Expected lineage:
result_table.c → source_table.a, source_table.b
Current lineage with LogicalRDD:
result_table.c → source_table.c
To avoid producing wrong lineage — which is worse than incomplete lineage — this PR disables Column-Level Lineage generation when Spark produces a LogicalRDD. This ensures correctness and avoids misleading downstream consumers.