Chapter 5: Crossing the Language Barrier with the Arrow C Data API

Not to sound like a broken record, but I've said several times already that Apache Arrow is a collection of libraries rather than one single library. This is an important distinction from both a technical standpoint and a logistical one. From a technical standpoint, it means that third-party projects that depend on Arrow don't need to use the entirety of the project and instead can only link against, embed, or otherwise include the portions of the project they need. This allows for smaller binaries and a smaller surface area of dependencies. From a logistical standpoint, it allows the Arrow project to pivot easily and move in potentially experimental directions without making large, project-wide changes.

As the goal of the Arrow project is to create a collection of tools and libraries that can be shared across the data analytics and data science ecosystems with a shared in-memory representation, there are...