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IBM

Introduction to Big Data with Spark and Hadoop

This self-paced IBM course will teach you all about big data! You will become familiar with the characteristics of big data and its application in big data analytics. You will also gain hands-on experience with big data processing tools like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark. Bernard Marr defines big data as the digital trace that we are generating in this digital era. You will start the course by understanding what big data is and exploring how insights from big data can be harnessed for a variety of use cases. You’ll also explore how big data uses technologies like parallel processing, scaling, and data parallelism. Next, you will learn about Hadoop, an open-source framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data and its ecosystem. You will discover important applications that go hand in hand with Hadoop, like Distributed File System (HDFS), MapReduce, and HBase. You will become familiar with Hive, a data warehouse software that provides an SQL-like interface to efficiently query and manipulate large data sets. You’ll then gain insights into Apache Spark, an open-source processing engine that provides users with new ways to store and use big data. In this course, you will discover how to leverage Spark to deliver reliable insights. The course provides an overview of the platform, going into the components that make up Apache Spark. You’ll learn about DataFrames and perform basic DataFrame operations and work with SparkSQL. Explore how Spark processes and monitors the requests your application submits and how you can track work using the Spark Application UI. This course has several hands-on labs to help you apply and practice the concepts you learn. You will complete Hadoop and Spark labs using various tools and technologies, including Docker, Kubernetes, Python, and Jupyter Notebooks.

Status: Performance Tuning
Status: Distributed Computing
IntermediateCourse20 hours

Featured reviews

JS

4.0Reviewed May 1, 2022

hands on lab and quizzes at the end of each session was very helpful

AA

5.0Reviewed Jan 15, 2024

Great program to explore more about AI and Big Data

SS

4.0Reviewed Nov 11, 2022

This is really helpful for me to understand Big Data and Apache Spark!

TK

5.0Reviewed Jan 17, 2025

I have learned a lot from this course, and hopefully it would be helping me throughout my career ahead. Very well designed course, I like the way of teaching, and structured modules.

JO

5.0Reviewed Jun 7, 2024

A very very indepth couse by IBM. As someone who studies most courses on Coursera, I think IBM offers an in depth course so far

DS

4.0Reviewed Jan 10, 2025

I found the course to be a great foundation for understanding how to work with large datasets using Hadoop and Spark, with clear explanations and practical examples.

AP

5.0Reviewed Mar 7, 2022

the lecture was clearly understandible and I feel very gratefull to have this lecture thank you it was phenomenal😊

ND

5.0Reviewed Nov 8, 2022

All the thinks I need to know about Big Data, Spark, Hadoop and Hive and explained in details

MB

4.0Reviewed Jun 11, 2023

Synth voice narration quality is truly annoying. I'd expect better from IBM. Course materials are quite superficial, which I guess is acceptable for an introductory course.

CS

5.0Reviewed Oct 27, 2022

well-structured course with comprehensive content and practical skills

RS

5.0Reviewed May 7, 2022

Fantastic blend of theory and practical (labs). The labs are short and have concise material.

MG

5.0Reviewed Jul 15, 2023

Course was full of information and details for a beginner In big data technology

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