The success of Hadoop as a big data platform raised user expectations, both in terms of solving different analytics challenges as well as reducing latency. Various tools evolved over time, but when Apache Spark came, it provided one single runtime to address all these challenges. It eliminated the need to combine multiple tools with their own challenges and learning curves. By using memory for persistent storage besides compute, Apache Spark eliminates the need to store intermedia data in disk and increases processing speed up to 100 times. It also provides a single runtime, which addresses various analytics needs such as machine-learning and real-time streaming using various libraries.
This book covers the installation and configuration of Apache Spark and building solutions using Spark Core, Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, MLlib, and GraphX libraries.
Note
For more information on this book's recipes, please visit infoobjects.com/spark-cookbook.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with Apache Spark, explains how to install Spark on various environments and cluster managers.
Chapter 2, Developing Applications with Spark, talks about developing Spark applications on different IDEs and using different build tools.
Chapter 3, External Data Sources, covers how to read and write to various data sources.
Chapter 4, Spark SQL, takes you through the Spark SQL module that helps you to access the Spark functionality using the SQL interface.
Chapter 5, Spark Streaming, explores the Spark Streaming library to analyze data from real-time data sources, such as Kafka.
Chapter 6, Getting Started with Machine Learning Using MLlib, covers an introduction to machine learning and basic artifacts such as vectors and matrices.
Chapter 7, Supervised Learning with MLlib – Regression, walks through supervised learning when the outcome variable is continuous.
Chapter 8, Supervised Learning with MLlib – Classification, discusses supervised learning when the outcome variable is discrete.
Chapter 9, Unsupervised Learning with MLlib, covers unsupervised learning algorithms such as k-means.
Chapter 10, Recommender Systems, introduces building recommender systems using various techniques, such as ALS.
Chapter 11, Graph Processing Using GraphX, talks about various graph processing algorithms using GraphX.
Chapter 12, Optimizations and Performance Tuning, covers various optimizations on Apache Spark and performance tuning techniques.
You need the InfoObjects Big Data Sandbox software to proceed with the examples in this book. This software can be downloaded from http://www.infoobjects.com.
If you are a data engineer, an application developer, or a data scientist who would like to leverage the power of Apache Spark to get better insights from big data, then this is the book for you.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Spark expects Java to be installed and the JAVA_HOME environment variable to be set."
A block of code is set as follows:
lazy val root = (project in file("."))
settings(
name := "wordcount"
)Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ wget http://d3kbcqa49mib13.cloudfront.net/spark-1.4.0-bin-hadoop2.4.tgz
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on Security Credentials under your account name in the top-right corner."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/7061OS_ColorImages.pdf.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.