Big Data For Dummies

Chapter 8

MapReduce Fundamentals

In This Chapter

The origins of MapReduce

Looking at the map function

Exploring the reduce function

Putting map and reduce together

Optimizing MapReduce tasks

While big data has dominated the headlines over the past year, large computing problems have existed since the beginning of the computer era. Each time a newer, faster, higher-capacity computer system was introduced, people found problems that were too big for the system to handle. Along came local-area networks, and the industry turned to combining the compute and storage capacities of systems on the network toward solving bigger and bigger problems. The distribution of compute- and data-intensive applications is at the heart of a solution to big data challenges. To best achieve reliable distribution at scale, new technology approaches were needed. MapReduce is one of those new approaches. MapReduce is a software framework that enables developers to write programs that can process massive amounts ...