Part 1. Spark and graphs

Graphs—the things composed of vertices and edges, not graphs from Algebra class—carry a mystique about them. They seem to be very powerful, yet what can be done with them is a bit of a mystery. Part of the problem is that the answer “graphs can do anything” says precisely nothing. Right off in chapter 1, we suggest a broad categorization of different types of graphs found in the world. In the last third of chapter 3 we illustrate graph terminology.

Apache Spark is a distributed computing system growing in popularity due to its speed. GraphX is Spark applied to graphs, and chapter 1 describes how GraphX fits into a data processing workflow. In chapter 2, you’ll actually get hands on with PageRank, the algorithm that launched Google.

Chapter 3 is a crash course in the three foundational technologies required for this book: Spark, Scala, and graphs.