Difference in dense rank and row number in spark

The difference is when there are “ties” in the ordering column. Check the example below:

import org.apache.spark.sql.expressions.Window
import org.apache.spark.sql.functions._

val df = Seq(("a", 10), ("a", 10), ("a", 20)).toDF("col1", "col2")

val windowSpec = Window.partitionBy("col1").orderBy("col2")

df
  .withColumn("rank", rank().over(windowSpec))
  .withColumn("dense_rank", dense_rank().over(windowSpec))
  .withColumn("row_number", row_number().over(windowSpec)).show

+----+----+----+----------+----------+
|col1|col2|rank|dense_rank|row_number|
+----+----+----+----------+----------+
|   a|  10|   1|         1|         1|
|   a|  10|   1|         1|         2|
|   a|  20|   3|         2|         3|
+----+----+----+----------+----------+

Note that the value “10” exists twice in col2 within the same window (col1 = "a"). That’s when you see a difference between the three functions.