Extend Arrow support to cover nullable data

[eddelbuettel]

The arrowio header provides import export support from/to TileDB and Arrow with its interface of two void* pointers. This PR extends the support to cover 'nullable' aka 'validity map' data.

The PR is in need of some tests but the existing tests is a little involved between Python, pybind11 and C++ so @ihnorton has kindly 'volunteered' to add this.

The PR will remain a draft til we have tests.

---

TYPE: FEATURE
DESC: Nullable support for Arrow

[shortcut-integration]

This pull request has been linked to Shortcut Story #27472: Extend arrow i/o operations to nullable columns.

[Shelnutt2]

Looks like a few msvc errors, https://github.com/TileDB-Inc/TileDB/actions/runs/4758463351/jobs/8456556083?pr=4049#step:10:593

 D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(619,18): error C2131: expression did not evaluate to a constant (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(619,18): message : failure was caused by a read of a variable outside its lifetime (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(619,18): message : see usage of 'n' (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(621,18): error C2131: expression did not evaluate to a constant (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(621,18): message : failure was caused by a read of a variable outside its lifetime (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(621,18): message : see usage of 'n' (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(624,15): error C3863: array type 'uint8_t [n]' is not assignable (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(650,39): error C2131: expression did not evaluate to a constant (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(640,34): message : failure was caused by a read of a variable outside its lifetime (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(640,34): message : see usage of 'arw_array' (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(651,39): error C2131: expression did not evaluate to a constant (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(640,34): message : failure was caused by a read of a variable outside its lifetime (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(640,34): message : see usage of 'arw_array' (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]
D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\tiledb\sm\cpp_api\arrow_io_impl.h(657,24): error C3863: array type 'int64_t [num_offsets+1]' is not assignable (compiling source file D:\a\TileDB\TileDB\test\src\unit-arrow.cc) [D:\a\tdbbd\tiledb\test\tiledb_unit.vcxproj]

[eddelbuettel]

I also saw an Ubuntu build fail but figure that would be spurious. My changes so far are quite gingerly and limited. Let's see what happens once new tests get injected.

[kounelisagis]

@eddelbuettel if you see my last commit, we were basically never testing col sizes greater than zero.
My change cause the test to fail with the message:

  WriterBase: Invalid offsets for attribute utf_string1; the last offset: 0 is
  not equal to the size of the data buffer: 71

or something similar.

Do you have any idea? Spent some hours but couldn't find any solution.

[eddelbuettel]

Howdy. Love that you are trying to resurrect the PR. Theses days it would probably be better to wrap some of the code in the nanoarrow (header-only) helper functions we already use in tiledb-r and tiledbsoma (mostly the R parts). See https://github.com/apache/arrow-nanoarrow and check out the recently expanded python side (to manipulate objects; nanoarrow is really three packages namely the header-only C/C++ helper, a somewhat mature R package to work on object s and a growing Python package).

I think I wrote this PR after I had similar work in the R package where I since have changed things. (Just took a look.) Hm, that is on the other hand quite motivated by SOMA's libtiledbsoma and its ColumnBuffers etc.

My pedestrian approach has usually been to setup a similar mock function standalone, or as an R extension, and ten abstract out the pure C++ side for Core.

Back to your PR: I honestly do not know what the col size is mad about. Is there something driving this now and/or urgency?