Skip to content

Type signature matching errors are overly verbose and show internal details #20501

@erratic-pattern

Description

@erratic-pattern

Description

After upgrading to DataFusion 52, error messages for function signature mismatches have become less concise and helpful. When a user tries to call an aggregate function with an unsupported type, they now see verbose internal errors instead of user-friendly messages.

This regression was introduced in PR #18769 ("Refactor avg & sum signatures away from user defined"), which was part of the broader effort in #12725 to avoid use of Signature::user_defined.

To Reproduce

CREATE TABLE test (bool_col BOOLEAN);
SELECT SUM(bool_col) FROM test;

Before (DataFusion 51):

Error during planning: Execution error: Function 'sum' user-defined coercion failed with "Execution error: Sum not supported for Boolean" No function matches the given name and argument types 'sum(Boolean)'. You might need to add explicit type casts.
	Candidate functions:
	sum(UserDefined)

The key message "Sum not supported for Boolean" was clear and actionable.

After (DataFusion 52):

Error during planning: Internal error: Function 'sum' failed to match any signature, errors: Internal error: Expect TypeSignatureClass::Decimal but received NativeType::Boolean, DataType: Boolean.
This issue was likely caused by a bug in DataFusion's code. Please help us to resolve this by filing a bug report in our issue tracker: https://github.com/apache/datafusion/issues,Internal error: Expect TypeSignatureClass::Native(LogicalType(Native(UInt64), UInt64)) but received NativeType::Boolean, DataType: Boolean.
This issue was likely caused by a bug in DataFusion's code...
[repeats for each signature variant]
	Candidate functions:
	sum(Coercion(TypeSignatureClass::Decimal))
	sum(Coercion(TypeSignatureClass::Native(LogicalType(Native(UInt64), UInt64)), implicit_coercion=...))
	...

Problems With New Error

  1. Misleading: Says "Internal error" and asks users to file a bug report, but this is a user error (wrong argument type), not a DataFusion bug
  2. Verbose: Shows every failed signature match attempt with internal type system details (TypeSignatureClass::Native(LogicalType(...)))
  3. Lost context: The meaningful message "Sum not supported for Boolean" is no longer present

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions