Book Image

Feature Store for Machine Learning

By : Jayanth Kumar M J
Book Image

Feature Store for Machine Learning

By: Jayanth Kumar M J

Overview of this book

Feature store is one of the storage layers in machine learning (ML) operations, where data scientists and ML engineers can store transformed and curated features for ML models. This makes them available for model training, inference (batch and online), and reuse in other ML pipelines. Knowing how to utilize feature stores to their fullest potential can save you a lot of time and effort, and this book will teach you everything you need to know to get started. Feature Store for Machine Learning is for data scientists who want to learn how to use feature stores to share and reuse each other's work and expertise. You’ll be able to implement practices that help in eliminating reprocessing of data, providing model-reproducible capabilities, and reducing duplication of work, thus improving the time to production of the ML model. While this ML book offers some theoretical groundwork for developers who are just getting to grips with feature stores, there's plenty of practical know-how for those ready to put their knowledge to work. With a hands-on approach to implementation and associated methodologies, you'll get up and running in no time. By the end of this book, you’ll have understood why feature stores are essential and how to use them in your ML projects, both on your local system and on the cloud.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
1
Section 1 – Why Do We Need a Feature Store?
4
Section 2 – A Feature Store in Action
9
Section 3 – Alternatives, Best Practices, and a Use Case

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the terminology used in the feature store world, specifically terminology that relate to Feast. However, keep in mind that many of the existing feature stores use similar terminology, so if you are familiar with one, it is easy to understand the others. We also discussed how the point-in-time join works in Feast, along with the Feast fundamentals such as installation, initialization, project structure, and API usage. Finally, we explored the components of Feast and how the operationalization of a model works with Feast.

In the next chapter, we'll use Feast in the model we built in Chapter 1, An Overview of the Machine Learning Life Cycle, learn how it changes the way data scientists and engineers work, and see how it opens the door to new opportunities in feature sharing, monitoring, and easy productionization of our ML models.