Apache Arrow support

[1chandu]

This issue tracks remaining work for columnar table support in deck.gl

deck.gl v8.0

loaders.gl v2.0

• Tracker: Columnar Table Support in loaders.gl v2

GPUTable (@ibgreen/@1chandu)

• GPUTable documentation (@ibgreen)
• Arrow column->GPUTable attribute mappings (Arrow metadata semantics) documentation (@ibgreen)
• GPUTable initial implementation (@ibgreen)
• GPUTable full implementation (@1chandu)

GPUTable transformations (@1chandu)

• GPU Table Transformer: Transform (combine etc) raw Apache Arrow columns in GPU tables into Layer-compatible Attribute tables (positions = vec3, colors = vec4s, float64 handling, matrices, ...)

  - Inputs: 
         - Schema defining Apache Arrow table.
         - One Buffer object for each Apache table column
  - Outputs:
        - Set of Buffers to match deck.gl Layer attributes.
  

  • Make GPUTransform work for a single attribute (position column generated by longitude and latitude columns), write unit tests GPUTable and GPUTransform Initial implemenation #3796
  • Integrate GPUTable/GPUTransform with deck.gl and make single example work
    • Send GPUTable as data prop , and have AttributeManager/Layer extract attributes and set.
    • Use loaders.gl to generate column data, and use it to build GPUTable
      • Verify loaders.gl arrow loader with simple arrow data
      • Use csv loader to generate arrow data
    • Use 3D heatmap example to generate arrow data from csv file, build GPU table and pass it as data prop.
    • Move GPUTable and new column generation into deck.gl ??

[1chandu]

Over to @Pessimistress , close it if this is covered by other issues.