Provide documentation of expose APIs to enable handling of type coercion at UNION plan construction. (#12142)

* chore(12105): enable union type-coercion by two approaches, using newly pub interfaces

* chore(12105): update documentation to delineate btwn the interfaces involved in type coercion

* chore((12105): update union() logical plan construction docs, to address type coercion

Author: wiedld

datafusion/expr/src/logical_plan/builder.rs

@@ -1331,7 +1331,17 @@ pub fn validate_unique_names<'a>(
     })
 }
 
-/// Union two logical plans.
+/// Union two [`LogicalPlan`]s.
+///
+/// Constructs the UNION plan, but does not perform type-coercion. Therefore the
+/// subtree expressions will not be properly typed until the optimizer pass.
+///
+/// If a properly typed UNION plan is needed, refer to [`TypeCoercionRewriter::coerce_union`]
+/// or alternatively, merge the union input schema using [`coerce_union_schema`] and
+/// apply the expression rewrite with [`coerce_plan_expr_for_schema`].
+///
+/// [`TypeCoercionRewriter::coerce_union`]: https://docs.rs/datafusion-optimizer/latest/datafusion_optimizer/analyzer/type_coercion/struct.TypeCoercionRewriter.html#method.coerce_union
+/// [`coerce_union_schema`]: https://docs.rs/datafusion-optimizer/latest/datafusion_optimizer/analyzer/type_coercion/fn.coerce_union_schema.html
 pub fn union(left_plan: LogicalPlan, right_plan: LogicalPlan) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
     // Temporarily use the schema from the left input and later rely on the analyzer to
     // coerce the two schemas into a common one.

datafusion/optimizer/src/analyzer/type_coercion.rs

@@ -56,6 +56,8 @@ use datafusion_expr::{
     Projection, ScalarUDF, Union, WindowFrame, WindowFrameBound, WindowFrameUnits,
 };
 
+/// Performs type coercion by determining the schema
+/// and performing the expression rewrites.
 #[derive(Default)]
 pub struct TypeCoercion {}
 
@@ -128,16 +130,23 @@ fn analyze_internal(
     .map_data(|plan| plan.recompute_schema())
 }
 
-pub(crate) struct TypeCoercionRewriter<'a> {
+/// Rewrite expressions to apply type coercion.
+pub struct TypeCoercionRewriter<'a> {
     pub(crate) schema: &'a DFSchema,
 }
 
 impl<'a> TypeCoercionRewriter<'a> {
+    /// Create a new [`TypeCoercionRewriter`] with a provided schema
+    /// representing both the inputs and output of the [`LogicalPlan`] node.
     fn new(schema: &'a DFSchema) -> Self {
         Self { schema }
     }
 
-    fn coerce_plan(&mut self, plan: LogicalPlan) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
+    /// Coerce the [`LogicalPlan`].
+    ///
+    /// Refer to [`TypeCoercionRewriter::coerce_join`] and [`TypeCoercionRewriter::coerce_union`]
+    /// for type-coercion approach.
+    pub fn coerce_plan(&mut self, plan: LogicalPlan) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
         match plan {
             LogicalPlan::Join(join) => self.coerce_join(join),
             LogicalPlan::Union(union) => Self::coerce_union(union),
@@ -153,7 +162,7 @@ impl<'a> TypeCoercionRewriter<'a> {
     ///
     /// For example, on_exprs like `t1.a = t2.b AND t1.x = t2.y` will be stored
     /// as a list of `(t1.a, t2.b), (t1.x, t2.y)`
-    fn coerce_join(&mut self, mut join: Join) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
+    pub fn coerce_join(&mut self, mut join: Join) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
         join.on = join
             .on
             .into_iter()
@@ -176,7 +185,7 @@ impl<'a> TypeCoercionRewriter<'a> {
 
     /// Coerce the union’s inputs to a common schema compatible with all inputs.
     /// This occurs after wildcard expansion and the coercion of the input expressions.
-    fn coerce_union(union_plan: Union) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
+    pub fn coerce_union(union_plan: Union) -> Result<LogicalPlan> {
         let union_schema = Arc::new(coerce_union_schema(&union_plan.inputs)?);
         let new_inputs = union_plan
             .inputs
@@ -809,7 +818,10 @@ fn coerce_case_expression(case: Case, schema: &DFSchema) -> Result<Case> {
 }
 
 /// Get a common schema that is compatible with all inputs of UNION.
-fn coerce_union_schema(inputs: &[Arc<LogicalPlan>]) -> Result<DFSchema> {
+///
+/// This method presumes that the wildcard expansion is unneeded, or has already
+/// been applied.
+pub fn coerce_union_schema(inputs: &[Arc<LogicalPlan>]) -> Result<DFSchema> {
     let base_schema = inputs[0].schema();
     let mut union_datatypes = base_schema
         .fields()