Frank Kane's Taming Big Data with Apache Spark and Python

This book keeps things simple and as its primary intent on a primer for spark it does its job. I'm still learning spark but I think a couple things would have improved my review:I would have liked more details and elaboration on design patterns and how spark really works. As an example, Frank shows you how to implement broadcasting in the book and to use the apis. Nice. But at the end I still don't quite understand how broadcasting works with multiple spark pools and how the RDD works as well as it can. What's the magical stuff that make spark one one the most popular frameworks for large scale data analytics? I'm going to re-read a few sections after this review and see if that clears any doubts.There's some basic design patterns, which is nice, but it would have been nice to have a more complete this on how to optimize spark code to do more complicated tasks.Also he goes through line by line explains of code. You may like that, but as I'm quite proficient at code reading I thought the explanation s took precious space from more constructive content.I'm conclusion: Frank accomplished I think what he was intending, which is allowing someone who reads this to be able to work with basic spark stuff. Personally though, as an data engineer I'm left at the end of the book slightly unsatisfied by the depth at which he covers his content.

If your learning style is from doing hands on, this is the best book. The Author explains the installation procedure very clearly starting with what needed to be downloaded. There are screen shots at required steps so that we don't get lost. After the installation, he explains so many cases and elaborates every line of code. For a complete novice like me who comes from traditional RDBMS background, the mystery around Big Data has vanished. It is good to learn some Python before. Hey, if you are getting into Big Data, Spark domain and don't like learning Java - Python is the way to go anyway.Such a lucid style of imparting knowledge, big Thank You to Mr.Kane.

Pros - Does walk through examples thoroughly and slowly.Cons - So. Much. Filler. I'm talking repeating entire paragraphs, long running sentences reminding the reader of the topic that was just defined, poorly inserted diagrams to maximize space. Why do this? Just so it can be said that the book is X pages long?I'm attaching an example page from the book, where the reader is about the learn how to count the words in a book and the author has pasted the cover of said book, and called it a day for that page. So. Blatant.

I got this book to learn Spark for use in data science. The book explained everything well and also comes with code downloads and data-sets. Learning from this book has been fun and has given me a deep understanding of Spark. I highly recommend this book.

Good thing about this book is that most of the concepts are explained with example.All of the sample scripts run fine and are well documented.i wish Mr. Frank publish book on advanced python spark and more around machine learning concepts with examples.

Exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to learn spark with clear easy to follow examples and this book delivers. The author does a great job of organizing every chapter and thoroughly explaining with easy to follow examples.

It could have been more in-depth with SQL modules. Spark sql is no where to be found and most of the material is introductory. It will not be one book that cover most of what you need for spark

Little python + this book = you can call yourself a novice spark developer. Best book for spark beginners

I'm half way through the book and here is my opinion.1. If you are very very new to python programming, this book is not suitable. Have some grasp on the language and start this.2. Good explanation if you have the basic. Limited theory and more hands on.3. I found few coding issues. Page : 134. Code line 20, 23.Have used lambda x : (x[1], x[0]) instead to flip.4. Very less content on dataframes.

This is a pure no nonsense introduction on using Spark with Python.The book focuses mainly on RDD operations giving many examples with detailed explanation.The book is written in easy to understand and simple language, and does an absolutely good job at introducing Spark and it's various features.

Very nicely described, the examples are good to explore syntaxes in pyspark, a good start book if you know python

Not as good as expected. There is no technicals . Only repeated stuff.

Great book for beginners.