What is JOB_flow_overrides in Airflow EmrCreateJobFlowOperator? When to use it - airflow

I have seen people creating JOB_flow_overrides in creating EMR. I have set up all those master and slave nodes required in emr_default (extra), DO I still need it? In what cases will use this parameter?

job_flow_overrides is used to create a new emr cluster every time the dag is ran.
https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow-providers-amazon/stable/operators/emr.html

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Is it a good practice to use airflow metadatabase to control pipelines?

Recently I'm developing an airflow pipeline that will be running for multi tenants. This DAG will be triggered via API, and separated by batches, which is controlled by a metadabase in SQL following some business rules.
Each batch has a batch_id in order to controll the batches, and it is passed to conf DAG via API. The batch id has the timestamp of creation combined with tenant and filetype. Example: tenant1_20221120123323 ... tenant2_20221120123323. These batches can contain two filetypes ( for example purpouses) and for each filetype a DAG is triggered (DAG1 for filetype 1 and DAG2 for filetype 2) and then from the file perspective, it is combined with the filetype in some stages tenant1_20221120123323_filetype1, tenant1_20221120123323_filetype2 ...
For illustrate this, imagine that the first dag the following pipeline process_data_on_spark >> check_new_files_on_statingstorage >> [filetype2_exists, write_new_data_to_warehouse] filetype2_exists >> read_data_from_filetype2 >> merge_filetype2_filetype2 >> write_new_data_to_warehouse . Where the filetype2_exists is a BranchPythonOperator, that verify if DAG_2 was triggered, and if it was, it will merge the resulted data form DAG2 with the DAG1 before execute write_new_data_to_warehouse.
Based on this DAG model, there will be one DAG run for each tenant. So, the DAG can have multiple DAG runs running in parallel if we trigger more than one DAG run (one per tenant). Here is my first question:
Is a good practice work with multiple DAG runs in the same DAG instead of working with Dynamic DAGs ? In this case, I would end withprocess_data_on_spark _tenant1,
process_data_on_spark _tenant2, ...process_data_on_spark _tenantN. It worth mention that the number of tenants can reach hundreads.
Now, considering that the filetype2 can or not be present in the batch, and, considering that I would use the model mentioned above (on single DAG with multiples DAG run runnning in parallel - one for each tenant). The only idead that I have for check if DAG2 was triggered for the current batch (ie., filetype2 was present in the batch) was modify the DAG_run_id to include the batch_id, combined with the filetype:
The default dag_run_id: manual__2022-11-19T00:00:00+00:00
The new dag_run_id: manual__tenant1_20221120123323_filetype2__2022-11-19T00:00:00+00:00
And from then, I would be able to query the airflow metadatabse and check if there was an dag_run_id that contains the current batch_id and the filetype2 running, and, with a sensor, wait for the dag_status be success. Then, I could run the read_data_from_filetype2 task. Otherwise, if there is no dag_run_id with batch_id and filetype2 registed in airflow metadatabase, I can follow the write_new_data_to_warehouse directly.
Here's the other question:
Is a good practice to modify dag_run_id and use it combined with airflow metadatabase to control pipelines?
Considering this scenario, It would be better to create dynamic DAGs, even if there would be result in hundeads DAGs or working with dag_run_id and airflow_metadabase and keep parallel DAG runs in one single DAG?
Or, there would be a better approach for this problem?
Thank You.

How do TaskInstances in the same process share variables in airflow

I have a requirement to get information from the current instance process in a running DAGs instance
For example, if I have created an DAGs instance [run_id] via the airflow API, do I have a way to get the global variables of this process group and define a method that is aware of the global variables of each DAGs instance to get the parameters I want
If you need to cross-communication between tasks you can use Xcom
Note that xcom is used to share metadata and are limited in size.
Airflow also offer Variables as key/value store.

Add job inside another job for APSchedule

I am using APScheduler in a FastAPI application. I have a table, where I stored my async tasks. Then, using APScheduler, I would like to read this table every hour and add new jobs (one per row of the table) to the queue. These jobs are light, so using celery is overkilling I feel. However, I have difficulty in starting a job inside another job for APScheduler.
So, the question is how a job can be added inside another job? Any ideas or help are appreciated.
I've also had a problem with this and a simple solution is to have the scheduler as a global variable available in the job's module. You might also have to use the memory store, as it allows for passing unserializable objects.
You can also pass the scheduler to the job, as long as the job is being run on an executor that doesn't require the arguments to be serialized.
For example, you can have a periodic job running on the asyncio executor that gets the scheduler as an argument, and adds further jobs to it, that are to be run with the ProcessPool executor.
For more info, refer to this discussion in the Gitter channel

Sharing information between DAGs in airflow

I have one dag that tells another dag what tasks to create in a specific order.
Dag 1 -> a file that has a task order
This runs every 5 minutes or so to keep this file fresh.
Dag 2 -> runs the task
this runs daily.
How can I pass this data between the two DAGs using Airflow.
Solutions and problems
The problem with using Airflow Variables is that I cannot set them at runtime.
The problem with using Xcoms is that they can only be run during the task stage and once the tasks are created in Dag 2, they're set and cannot be changed correct?
The problem with pushing the file to s3 is that the airflow instance doesn't have permission to pull from s3 due to security reasons decided by a team that I have no control over.
So what can I do? What are some choices I have?
What is the file format of the output from the 1st DAG? I would recommend the following workflow
Dag 1 -> Update the tasks order and store it in a yaml or json file inside the airflow environment.
Dag 2 -> Read the file to create the required tasks and run them daily.
You need to understand that airflow is constantly reading your dag files to have the latest configuration, so no extra step would be required.
I have had a similar issue in the past and it largely depends on your setup.
If you are running Airflow on Kubernetes this might work.
You create a PV(Persistent Volume) and PVC
You start your application with a KubernetesOperator and mount the PVC to it.
You store the result on the PVC.
You mount the PVC to the other pod.

Determining if a DAG is executing

I am using Airflow 1.9.0 with a custom SFTPOperator. I have code in my DAGs that poll an SFTP site to find new files. If any are found, then I create custom task id's for the dynamically created task and retrieve/delete the files.
directory_list = sftp_handler('sftp-site', None, '/', None, SFTPToS3Operation.LIST)
for file_path in directory_list:
... SFTP code that GET's the remote files
That part works fine. It seems both the airflow webserver and airflow scheduler are iterating through all the DAGs once a second and actually running the code that retrieves the directory_list. This means I'm hitting the SFTP site ~2 x a second to authenticate and pull a list of files. I'd like to have some conditional code that only executes if the DAG is actually being run.
When an SFTP site uses password authentication, the # of times I connect really isn't an issue. One site requires key authentication and if there are too many authentication failures in a short timespan, the account is locked. During my testing, this seems to happen occasionally for reasons I'm still trying to track down.
However, if I were authenticating only when the DAG was scheduled to execute, or executing manually, this would not be an issue. It also seems wasteful to spend so much time connecting to an SFTP site when it's not scheduled to do so.
I've seen a post that can check to see if a task is executing, but that's not ideal as I'd have to create a long-running task, using up resources I shouldn't require, just to perform that test. Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?
You have a very good use case for Airflow (SFTP to _____ batch jobs), but Airflow is not meant for dynamic DAGs as you are attempting to use them.
Top-Level DAG Code and the Scheduler Loop
As you noticed, any top-level code in a DAG is executed with each scheduler loop. Or put another way, every time the scheduler loop processes the files in your DAG directory it is interpreting all the code in your DAG files. Anything not in a task or operator is interpreted/executed immediately. This puts undue strain on the scheduler as well as any external systems you are making calls to.
Dynamic DAGs and the Airflow UI
Airflow does not handle dynamic DAGs through the UI well. This is mostly the result of the Airflow DAG state not being stored in the database. DAG views and history are rendered based on what exist in the interpreted DAG file at any given moment. I personally hope to see this change in the future with some form of DAG versioning.
In a dynamic DAG you can both add and remove tasks from a DAG.
Adding Tasks Dynamically
When adding tasks for a DAG run will make it appear (in the UI) that all DAG
runs before when that task never ran that task all. The will have a None state
and the DAG run will be set to success or failed depending on the outcome
of the DAG run.
Removing Tasks Dynamically
If your dynamic DAG ever removes tasks you will lose the ability to review history of the DAG. For example, if you run a DAG with task_x in the first 20 DAG runs but remove it after that, it will fail to show up in the UI until it is added back into the DAG.
Idempotency and Airflow
Airflow works best when the DAG runs are idempotent. This means that re-running any DAG Run should have the same affect no matter when you run it or how many times you run it. Dynamic DAGs in Airflow break idempotency by adding and removing tasks to previous DAG runs so that the results of re-running are not the same.
Solution Options
You have at least two options moving forward
1.) Continue to build your SFTP DAG dynamically, but create another DAG that writes the available SFTP files to a local file (if not using distributed executor) or an Airflow Variable (this will result in more reads to the Airflow DB) and build your DAG dynamically from that.
2.) Overload the SFTPOperator to take a list of files so that every file that exist is processed within a single task run. This will make the DAGs idempotent and you will maintain accurate history through the logs.
I apologize for the extended explanation, but you're touching on one of the rough spots of Airflow and I felt it was appropriate to give an overview of the problem at hand.

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