Chapter 3. Introducing Petrel

As discussed in Chapter 1, Getting Acquainted with Storm, Storm is a platform for processing large amounts of data in real time. Storm applications are often written in Java, but Storm supports other languages as well, including Python. While the concepts are similar across languages, the details vary by language. In this chapter, we'll get our first hands-on experience using Storm with Python. First, you'll learn about a Python library called Petrel, which is necessary for creating topologies in Python. Next, we'll set up our Python/Storm development environment. Then, we'll take a close look at a working Storm topology written in Python. Finally, we'll run the topology and you will learn some key techniques to ease the process of developing and debugging topologies. After you complete this chapter, you'll have a good high-level understanding of developing basic Storm topologies. In this chapter, we will cover these...