Author/s : Alex Holmes
Publisher : Manning Publications
Category :
Data modeling, SQL and JDBC
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating : 9 horseshoes
"Hadoop in Practice" covers recipes/techniques for working with Hadoop. The 85 techniques range from pure Hadoop to related technologies like Mahout and Pig. There was good discussion of algorithms.
Java is definitely a pre-requisite. The book says
you should have some knowledge of HDFS and MapReduce. Yet chapter one starts with "what is hadoop." It reads better as a review than an intro and doesn't fit with the rest of the book. It also assumes you haven't installed/started Hadoop. You really should read an intro book first and skim chapter one.
I particularly liked the chapters on MapReduce and performance. The overview of iostat and vmstat was clear and better than in many UNIX books. I also liked the AST explain plan. The techniques about when to use joins and sorts seemed like they would be in "Hadoop in Action" as well. Yet the comparison of different types fit well.
Each chapter begins with a conceptual overview which was very useful. The book also contains many diagrams to add clarity.
---
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in
exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.
More info at Manning