All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds. First, I must thank Allah for giving me the ability to think and write.

Next, I would like to thank my wife, Laila, for her big support, encouragement, and patience throughout this project. Also, I would like to thank my family in Canada and Lebanon for their support during the writing of this book.

I would like to thank everyone at Packt Publishing for their help and guidance, and for giving me the opportunity to share my experience and knowledge in technology with others in the Hadoop and MapReduce community.

Thank you as well to the technical reviewers, who provided great feedback to ensure that every tiny technical detail was accurate and rich in content.