Building Real-Time Analytics Systems

Preface

This book is a practical guide for implementing real-time analytics applications on top of existing data infrastructure. It is aimed at data engineers, data architects, and application developers who have some experience working with streaming data or would like to get acquainted with it.

In Chapters 1 and 2, we give an introduction to the topic and an overview of the types of real-time analytics applications that you can build. We also describe the types of products/tools that you’ll likely be using, explaining how to pick the right tool for the job, as well as explaining when a tool might not be necessary.

In Chapter 3, we introduce a fictional pizza company that already has streaming infrastructure set up but hasn’t yet implemented any real-time functionality. The next seven chapters will show how to implement different types of real-time analytics applications for this pizza company. If you’re interested in getting your hands dirty, these chapters will be perfect for you, and hopefully you’ll pick up some ideas (and code!) that you can use in your own projects.

The book will conclude with considerations when putting applications into production, a look at some real-world use cases of real-time analytics, and a gaze into our real-time analytics crystal ball to see what might be coming in this field over the next few years.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

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