Path: blob/master/cloud/notebooks/python_sdk/converters/Use ONNX model converted from TensorFlow to recognize hand-written digits.ipynb
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Use ONNX model converted from TensorFlow to recognize hand-written digits with ibm-watsonx-ai
This notebook facilitates ONNX
, Tensorflow (and TF.Keras)
, and watsonx.ai Runtime
service. It contains steps and code to work with ibm-watsonx-ai library available in PyPI repository in order to convert the TensorFlow model to ONNX format. It also introduces commands for getting model and training data, persisting model, deploying model and scoring it.
Some familiarity with Python is helpful. This notebook uses Python 3.11.
Learning goals
The learning goals of this notebook are:
Download an externally trained TensorFlow model with dataset.
Convert TensorFlow model to ONNX format
Persist converted model in watsonx.ai Runtime repository.
Deploy model for online scoring using client library.
Score sample records using client library.
Contents
This notebook contains the following parts:
1. Setting up the environment
Before you use the sample code in this notebook, you must perform the following setup tasks:
Create a watsonx.ai Runtime instance (information on service plans and further reading can be found here).
1.1. Installing and importing the ibm-watsonx-ai
and dependecies
Note: ibm-watsonx-ai
documentation can be found here.
1.2. Connecting to watsonx.ai Runtime
Authenticate to the watsonx.ai Runtime service on IBM Cloud. You need to provide platform api_key
and instance location
.
You can use IBM Cloud CLI to retrieve platform API Key and instance location.
API Key can be generated in the following way:
In result, get the value of api_key
from the output.
Location of your watsonx.ai Runtime instance can be retrieved in the following way:
In result, get the value of location
from the output.
Tip: Your Cloud API key
can be generated by going to the Users section of the Cloud console. From that page, click your name, scroll down to the API Keys section, and click Create an IBM Cloud API key. Give your key a name and click Create, then copy the created key and paste it below. You can also get a service specific url by going to the Endpoint URLs section of the watsonx.ai Runtime docs. You can check your instance location in your watsonx.ai Runtime Service instance details.
You can also get service specific apikey by going to the Service IDs section of the Cloud Console. From that page, click Create, then copy the created key and paste it below.
Action: Enter your api_key
and location
in the following cells.
{"name":"stdin","output_type":"stream","text":"Please enter your api key (hit enter): ········\n"}
If you are running this notebook on Cloud, you can access the location
via:
1.3. Working with spaces
First of all, you need to create a space that will be used for your work. If you do not have space already created, you can use Deployment Spaces Dashboard to create one.
Click New Deployment Space
Create an empty space
Select Cloud Object Storage
Select watsonx.ai Runtime instance and press Create
Copy
space_id
and paste it below
Tip: You can also use the ibm_watsonx_ai
SDK to prepare the space for your work. More information can be found here.
Action: Assign space ID below
You can use list
method to print all existing spaces.
To be able to interact with all resources available in watsonx.ai Runtime, you need to set space which you will be using.
2.1. Downloading dataset
2.2. Downloading TensorFlow model
2.3. (OPTIONAL) Downloading TensorFLow Keras model
To download the TensorFLow Keras model, change the Markdown
cell below to a Code
cell and remove the triple backticks (```
).
3. Converting TensorFlow model to ONNX format
In this section, you will unpack externally created TensorFlow models, provided in either SavedModel or Keras format (depending on your earlier selection), from the tar archive and convert them to the ONNX format. More information can be found here.
3.1. Converting TensorFlow SavedModel
Note: If you are working with TensorFlow Lite models, make sure to use the --tflite
flag instead of --saved-model
.
3.2. (OPTIONAL) Converting TensorFLow Keras model
To convert the TensorFLow Keras model to ONNX format, change the Markdown
cells below to a Code
cells and remove the triple backticks (```
).
In this section, you will learn how to store your converted ONNX model in watsonx.ai Runtime repository using the IBM watsonx.ai SDK.
4.1. Publishing model in watsonx.ai Runtime repository
Define model name, type and software spec.
4.2. Getting model details
In this section you'll learn how to create an online scoring service and predict on unseen data.
5.1. Creating online deployment for published model
Now you can print an online scoring endpoint.
5.2. Getting deployment details
You can use below method to do test scoring request against deployed model.
Let's first visualize two samples from dataset, we'll use for scoring.
Prepare scoring payload with records to score.
Use client.deployments.score()
method to run scoring.
Let's print the result of predictions.
As you can see, the predicted values are consistent with those calculated in the evaluation section.
If you want to clean up after the notebook execution, i.e. remove any created assets like:
experiments
trainings
pipelines
model definitions
models
functions
deployments
please follow up this sample notebook.
You successfully completed this notebook! You learned how to use ONNX, TensorFlow machine learning library as well as watsonx.ai for model creation and deployment. Check out our Online Documentation for more samples, tutorials, documentation, how-tos, and blog posts.
Authors
Michał Koruszowic, Software Engineer
Copyright © 2024-2025 IBM. This notebook and its source code are released under the terms of the MIT License.