1 Introduction

As the genetic/genomic data are having increasingly larger profile, the annotation file are also getting much bigger than expected. the memory space in R has been an obstable for fast and efficient data processing, because most available R or Bioconductor packages are developed based on in-memory data manipulation. With some newly developed data structure as HDF5 or GDS, and the R interface of DelayedArray to represent on-disk data structures with different back-end in R-user-friendly array data structure (e.g., HDF5Array,GDSArray), the high-throughput genetic/genomic data are now being able to easily loaded and manipulated within R. However, the annotation files for the samples and features inside the high-through data are also getting unexpectedly larger than before. With an ordinary data.frame or DataFrame, it is still getting more and more challenging for any analysis to be done within R. So here we have developed the DelayedDataFrame, which has the very similar characteristics as data.frame and DataFrame. But at the same time, all column data could be optionally saved on-disk (e.g., in DelayedArray structure with any back-end). Common operations like constructing, subsetting, splitting, combining could be done in the same way as DataFrame. This feature of DelayedDataFrame could enable efficient on-disk reading and processing of the large-scale annotation files, and at the same, signicantly saves memory space with common DataFrame metaphor in R and Bioconductor.

2 Installation

Download the package from Bioconductor:

if (!requireNamespace("BiocManager", quietly = TRUE))
    install.packages("BiocManager")
BiocManager::install("DelayedDataFrame")

The development version is also available to download through github:

BiocManager::install("Bioconductor/DelayedDataFrame")

Load the package into R session before using:

library(DelayedDataFrame)

3 DelayedDataFrame class

3.1 class extension

DelayedDataFrame extends the DataFrame data structure, with an additional slot called lazyIndex, which saves all the mapping indexes for each column of the data inside DelayedDataFrame. It is similar to data.frame in terms of construction, subsetting, splitting, combining… The rownames are having same feature as DataFrame. It will not be given automatically, but only by explicitly specify in the constructor function DelayedDataFrame(, row.names=...) or using the slot setter function rownames()<-.

Here we use the GDSArray data as example to show the DelayedDataFrame characteristics. GDSArray is a Bioconductor package that represents GDS files as objects derived from the DelayedArray package and DelayedArray class. It carries the on-disk data path and represent the GDS nodes in a DelayedArray-derived data structure.

The GDSArray() constructor takes 2 arguments: the file path and the GDS node name inside the GDS file.

library(GDSArray)
## Loading required package: gdsfmt
file <- SeqArray::seqExampleFileName("gds")
gdsnodes(file)
##  [1] "sample.id"                  "variant.id"                
##  [3] "position"                   "chromosome"                
##  [5] "allele"                     "genotype/data"             
##  [7] "genotype/~data"             "genotype/extra.index"      
##  [9] "genotype/extra"             "phase/data"                
## [11] "phase/~data"                "phase/extra.index"         
## [13] "phase/extra"                "annotation/id"             
## [15] "annotation/qual"            "annotation/filter"         
## [17] "annotation/info/AA"         "annotation/info/AC"        
## [19] "annotation/info/AN"         "annotation/info/DP"        
## [21] "annotation/info/HM2"        "annotation/info/HM3"       
## [23] "annotation/info/OR"         "annotation/info/GP"        
## [25] "annotation/info/BN"         "annotation/format/DP/data" 
## [27] "annotation/format/DP/~data" "sample.annotation/family"
varid <- GDSArray(file, "annotation/id")  
DP <- GDSArray(file, "annotation/info/DP")

We use an ordinary character vector and the GDSArray objects to construct a DelayedDataFrame object.

ddf <- DelayedDataFrame(varid, DP)  ## only accommodate 1D GDSArrays with same length

3.2 slot accessors

The slots of DelayedDataFrame could be accessed by lazyIndex(), nrow(), rownames() (if not NULL) functions. With a newly constructed DelayedDataFrame object, the initial value of lazyIndex slot will be NULL for all columns.

lazyIndex(ddf)
## LazyIndex of length 1
## [[1]]
## NULL
## 
## index of each column: 
## [1] 1 1
nrow(ddf)
## [1] 1348
rownames(ddf)
## NULL

3.3 lazyIndex slot

The lazyIndex slot is in LazyIndex class, which is defined in the DelayedDataFrame package and extends the SimpleList class. The listData slot saves unique indexes for all the columns, and the index slots saves the position of index in listData slot for each column in DelayedDataFrame object. In the above example, with an initial construction of DelayedDataFrame object, the index for each column will all be NULL, and all 3 columns points the NULL values which sits in the first position in listData slot of lazyIndex.

lazyIndex(ddf)@listData
## [[1]]
## NULL
lazyIndex(ddf)@index
## [1] 1 1

Whenever an operation is done (e.g., subsetting), the listData slot inside the DelayedDataFrame stays the same, but the lazyIndex slot will be updated, so that the show method, further statistical calculation will be applied to the subsetting data set. For example, here we subset the DelayedDataFrame object ddf to keep only the first 5 rows, and see how the lazyIndex works. As shown in below, after subsetting, the listData slot in ddf1 stays the same as ddf. But the subsetting operation was recorded in the lazyIndex slot, and the slots of lazyIndex, nrows and rownames (if not NULL) are all updated. So the subsetting operation is kind of delayed.

ddf1 <- ddf[1:20,]
identical(ddf@listData, ddf1@listData)
## [1] TRUE
lazyIndex(ddf1)
## LazyIndex of length 1
## [[1]]
##  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
## 
## index of each column: 
## [1] 1 1
nrow(ddf1)
## [1] 20

Only when functions like DataFrame(), or as.list(), the lazyIndex will be realized and DelayedDataFrame returned. We will show the realization in the following coercion method section.

4 DelayedDataFrame methods

The common methods on data.frame or DataFrame are also defined on DelayedDataFrame class, so that they behave similarily on DelayedDataFrame objects.

4.1 Coercion methods

Coercion methods between DelayedDataFrame and other data structures are defined. When coercing from ANY to DelayedDataFrame, the lazyIndex slot will be added automatically, with the initial NULL value of indexes for each column.

  • From vector
as(letters, "DelayedDataFrame")
## DelayedDataFrame with 26 rows and 1 column
##               X
##     <character>
## 1             a
## 2             b
## 3             c
## ...         ...
## 24            x
## 25            y
## 26            z
  • From DataFrame
as(DataFrame(letters), "DelayedDataFrame")
## DelayedDataFrame with 26 rows and 1 column
##         letters
##     <character>
## 1             a
## 2             b
## 3             c
## ...         ...
## 24            x
## 25            y
## 26            z
  • From list
(a <- as(list(a=1:5, b=6:10), "DelayedDataFrame"))
## DelayedDataFrame with 5 rows and 2 columns
##           a         b
##   <integer> <integer>
## 1         1         6
## 2         2         7
## 3         3         8
## 4         4         9
## 5         5        10
lazyIndex(a)
## LazyIndex of length 1
## [[1]]
## NULL
## 
## index of each column: 
## [1] 1 1

When coerce DelayedDataFrame into other data structure, the lazyIndex slot will be realized and the new data structure returned. For example, when DelayedDataFrame is coerced into a DataFrame object, the listData slot will be updated according to the lazyIndex slot.

df1 <- as(ddf1, "DataFrame")
df1@listData
## $varid
## <20> DelayedArray object of type "character":
##          [1]           [2]           [3]           .             [19] 
## "rs111751804" "rs114390380" "rs1320571"               .  "rs61751002" 
##          [20] 
##  "rs6691840"  
## 
## $DP
## <20> DelayedArray object of type "integer":
##  [1]  [2]  [3]  [4]    . [17] [18] [19] [20] 
## 3251 2676 7610 3383    . 6040 6589 5089 6871
dim(df1)
## [1] 20  2

4.2 Subsetting methods

4.2.1 subsetting by [

two-dimensional [ subsetting on DelayedDataFrame objects by integer, character, logical values all work.

  • integer subscripts.
ddf[, 1, drop=FALSE]
## DelayedDataFrame with 1348 rows and 1 column
##            varid
##       <GDSArray>
## 1    rs111751804
## 2    rs114390380
## 3      rs1320571
## ...          ...
## 1346   rs8135982
## 1347 rs116581756
## 1348   rs5771206
  • character subscripts (column names).
ddf[, "DP", drop=FALSE]
## DelayedDataFrame with 1348 rows and 1 column
##              DP
##      <GDSArray>
## 1          3251
## 2          2676
## 3          7610
## ...         ...
## 1346        823
## 1347       1257
## 1348         48
  • logical subscripts.
ddf[, c(TRUE,FALSE), drop=FALSE]
## DelayedDataFrame with 1348 rows and 1 column
##            varid
##       <GDSArray>
## 1    rs111751804
## 2    rs114390380
## 3      rs1320571
## ...          ...
## 1346   rs8135982
## 1347 rs116581756
## 1348   rs5771206

When subsetting using [ on an already subsetted DelayedDataFrame object, the lazyIndex, nrows and rownames(if not NULL) slot will be updated.

(a <- ddf1[1:10, 2, drop=FALSE])
## DelayedDataFrame with 10 rows and 1 column
##             DP
##     <GDSArray>
## 1         3251
## 2         2676
## 3         7610
## ...        ...
## 8         9076
## 9         9605
## 10        9707
lazyIndex(a)
## LazyIndex of length 1
## [[1]]
##  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
## 
## index of each column: 
## [1] 1
nrow(a)
## [1] 10

4.2.2 subsetting by [[

The [[ subsetting will take column subscripts for integer or character values, and return corresponding columns in it’s original data format.

ddf[[1]]
## <1348> GDSArray object of type "character":
##        [1]           [2]           [3]           .             [1347] 
## "rs111751804" "rs114390380" "rs1320571"               . "rs116581756" 
##        [1348] 
## "rs5771206"
ddf[["varid"]]
## <1348> GDSArray object of type "character":
##        [1]           [2]           [3]           .             [1347] 
## "rs111751804" "rs114390380" "rs1320571"               . "rs116581756" 
##        [1348] 
## "rs5771206"
identical(ddf[[1]], ddf[["varid"]])
## [1] TRUE

4.3 rbind/cbind

When doing rbind, the lazyIndex of input arguments will be realized and a new DelayedDataFrame with NULL lazyIndex will be returned.

ddf2 <- ddf[21:40, ]
(ddfrb <- rbind(ddf1, ddf2))
## DelayedDataFrame with 40 rows and 2 columns
##              varid             DP
##     <DelayedArray> <DelayedArray>
## 1      rs111751804           3251
## 2      rs114390380           2676
## 3        rs1320571           7610
## ...            ...            ...
## 38       rs1886116           3641
## 39     rs115917561           3089
## 40      rs61751016           4109
lazyIndex(ddfrb)
## LazyIndex of length 1
## [[1]]
## NULL
## 
## index of each column: 
## [1] 1 1

cbind of DelayedDataFrame objects will keep all existing lazyIndex of input arguments and carry into the new DelayedDataFrame object.

(ddfcb <- cbind(varid = ddf1[,1, drop=FALSE], DP=ddf1[, 2, drop=FALSE]))
## DelayedDataFrame with 20 rows and 2 columns
##           varid      DP.DP
##      <GDSArray> <GDSArray>
## 1   rs111751804       3251
## 2   rs114390380       2676
## 3     rs1320571       7610
## ...         ...        ...
## 18  rs115614983       6589
## 19   rs61751002       5089
## 20    rs6691840       6871
lazyIndex(ddfcb)
## LazyIndex of length 1
## [[1]]
##  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
## 
## index of each column: 
## [1] 1 1

5 sessionInfo

sessionInfo()
## R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14)
## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
## Running under: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
## 
## Matrix products: default
## BLAS:   /home/biocbuild/bbs-3.20-bioc/R/lib/libRblas.so 
## LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.12.0
## 
## locale:
##  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
##  [3] LC_TIME=en_GB              LC_COLLATE=C              
##  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
##  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
##  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       
## 
## time zone: America/New_York
## tzcode source: system (glibc)
## 
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats4    stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
## [8] base     
## 
## other attached packages:
##  [1] GDSArray_1.26.0         gdsfmt_1.42.0           DelayedDataFrame_1.22.0
##  [4] DelayedArray_0.32.0     SparseArray_1.6.0       S4Arrays_1.6.0         
##  [7] abind_1.4-8             IRanges_2.40.0          MatrixGenerics_1.18.0  
## [10] matrixStats_1.4.1       Matrix_1.7-1            S4Vectors_0.44.0       
## [13] BiocGenerics_0.52.0     BiocStyle_2.34.0       
## 
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
##  [1] jsonlite_1.8.9          compiler_4.4.1          BiocManager_1.30.25    
##  [4] crayon_1.5.3            Biostrings_2.74.0       GenomicRanges_1.58.0   
##  [7] parallel_4.4.1          jquerylib_0.1.4         yaml_2.3.10            
## [10] fastmap_1.2.0           lattice_0.22-6          R6_2.5.1               
## [13] XVector_0.46.0          GenomeInfoDb_1.42.0     knitr_1.48             
## [16] bookdown_0.41           GenomeInfoDbData_1.2.13 bslib_0.8.0            
## [19] rlang_1.1.4             cachem_1.1.0            xfun_0.48              
## [22] sass_0.4.9              cli_3.6.3               zlibbioc_1.52.0        
## [25] digest_0.6.37           grid_4.4.1              SeqArray_1.46.0        
## [28] lifecycle_1.0.4         evaluate_1.0.1          httr_1.4.7             
## [31] rmarkdown_2.28          UCSC.utils_1.2.0        tools_4.4.1            
## [34] htmltools_0.5.8.1