> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://alvintoh.gitbook.io/apache-2-0-spark-with-scala/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://alvintoh.gitbook.io/apache-2-0-spark-with-scala/section-3-spark-basics-and-simple-examples/9.-introduction-to-spark.md).

# 9. Introduction to Spark

## WHAT IS SPARK?

"A fast and general engine for large-scale data processing"

### It's Scalable

| Process Flow for Spark        |                              |                       |
| ----------------------------- | ---------------------------- | --------------------- |
|                               |                              | Executor -Cache Tasks |
| Driver Program -Spark Context | Cluster Manager (Spark,YARN) | Executor -Cache Tasks |
|                               |                              | Executor -Cache Tasks |

### It's Fast

* "Run programs up to 100x faster than Hadoop MapReduce in memory, or 10x faster on disk."
* DAG Engine (directed acyclic graph) optimizes workflows

### It's Hot

* Amazon
* Ebay: log analysis and aggregation
* NASA JPL: Deep Space Network
* Groupon
* TripAdviser
* Yahoo
* Many others: <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SPARK/Powered+By+Spark>

### It's Not That Hard

* Code in Python, Java, or Scala
* Build around one main concept: the Resilient Distributed Dataset (RDD)

### Components Of Spark

| SPARK CORE      |           |        |        |
| --------------- | --------- | ------ | ------ |
| Spark Streaming | Spark SQL | MLLLib | GraphX |

### This Course Uses Scala

* Why Scala?
  * Spark itself is written in Scala
  * Scala's functional programming model is a good fit for distributed processing
  * Gives you fast performance (Scala compiles to Java bytecode)
  * Less code & boilerplate stuff than Java
  * Python is slow in comparison
* But...
  * You probably don't know Scala
  * So we'll have to learn the basics first.
  * It's not as hard you think!

### Fear Not

* Scala code in Spark looks a LOTlike Python code.
* Python code to square numbers in a data set:

  ```
    nums = sc.parallelize([1, 2, 3, 4])
    squared = nums.map[lambda x: x * x].collect()
  ```
* Scala code to square numbers in a data set:

  ```
    val nums = sc.parallelize(List(1, 2, 3, 4))
    val squared = nums.map(x -> x * x).collect()
  ```


---

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