Spark: The Definitive Guide

"Spark: The Definitive Guide" is a comprehensive technical book written by the creators of the open-source cluster computing framework Apache Spark. It provides a detailed introduction to the usage, deployment, and maintenance of Apache Spark, with a particular focus on the improvements and new features of version 2.0. The authors, Bill Chambers and Matei Zaharia, organize the topics into clearly defined sections, each pursuing specific objectives. Readers gain insights into the fundamental operations and common functions of Spark's structured APIs, as well as the new high-level API for developing end-to-end streaming applications, known as Structured Streaming. The book is aimed at developers and system administrators, teaching the basics of monitoring, tuning, and debugging Spark. Additionally, it covers machine learning techniques and their application with MLlib, Spark's scalable machine learning library. Through practical examples, the core APIs of Spark, such as DataFrames, SQL, and Datasets, are clearly explained, along with how Spark operates in a cluster.