Academic Year 2021/2022

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Cesena
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Computer Science and Engineering (cod. 8614)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the student:- Knows the applications of Big Data technologies and the respective challenges - Knows the available hardware and software architectures to handle Big Data - Knows the techniques to store the data, the programming languages and paradigms generally adopted in this kind of systems - Knows the design methodologies for the different kinds of applications in the area of Big Data - Acquires practical expertise in using the different technologies through laboratory and projects. In particular, the main technologies used in practical exercises will be NoSQL databases and the Hadoop platform: Hive, Spark, Tez, Dremel, Giraph, Storm, Mahout, and Open R

Course contents

Requirements

A prior knowledge of relational databases, Java and Scala programming languages, and Unix-like systems is required to attend the course. Attendance of Business Intelligence and Data Mining courses is encouraged.

All lessons are given in Italian, but the teaching material is written in English. A good comprehension of English is thus required to use the material. Non-Italian speaking students can study on the English-written material and give the exam in English.

Course Contents

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1. Introduction to the course and to Big Data: what they are and how to use them

2. Cluster computing to handle Big Data

  • Hardware and software architectures
  • The Apache Hadoop framework and its modules (HDFS, YARN)
  • Hadoop-specific data structures (Apache Parquet)

3. The MapReduce paradigm: basic principles, limitations, design of algorithms

4. The Apache Spark system

  • Architecture, data structures,basic principles
  • Data partitioning and shuffling
  • Optimization of the computation

5. SQL on Big Data with Spark SQL

6. Data streaming

  • The architecture to handle data streaming
  • Approximated algorithms in the streaming context

7. NoSQL databases

8. Handling Big Data in the Cloud

  • Cluster on-premises vs in the cloud
  • The technological stack in the cloud
  • Deploy of a real case study on a cloud provider

9. Deploying a Data Mining problem with Big Data logic

Readings/Bibliography

  • Slides

Recommended readings:

  • Tom White. Hadoop - The Definitive Guide (4th edition). O'Reilly, 2015
  • Matei Zaharia, Holden Karau, Andy Konwinski, Patrick Wendell. Learning Spark, 2nd Edition. O'Reilly, 2020
  • Andrew G. Psaltis. Streaming Data - Understanding the real-time pipeline.Manning, 2017
  • Ian Foster, Dennis Gannon. Cloud Computing for Science and Engineering. MIT Press, 2017

Further readings will be mentioned during the course.

Teaching methods

Lessons and practical exercises.

As concerns the teaching methods of this course unit, all students must attend Module 1, 2 on Health and Safety online.

Assessment methods

The exam consists in an oral examination on all the covered topics and in the discussion of a project.

The goal of the project (to be arranged with the lecturer) is to identify a big-enough dataset, define an application to analyze the data (using the techniques and tools learned throughout the course) and write a short report. Groups up to 2 people can be formed. The project provides 0 to 3 points, that will be added to the grade obtained with the oral examination. Alternative projects (e.g., implementation of a data mining algorithm on a Big Data platform; experimental evaluation of a new tool within the Hadoop framework) can be discussed with the lecturer upon request.

Teaching tools

Practical exercises rely on a virtual cluster of 10 nodes, pre-configured with the Cloudera Express distribution. Each student is given a user account on one of the nodes, to be used to interact with the software tools installed in the cluster (mainly Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark). The connection to the cluster is done through an SSH client.

Additionally to the virtual cluster, alternative software solutions to interact with Big Data tools will be offered:

  • An individual virtual environment with the whole Cloudera Express distribution, to be used on the student's own computer on the lab computers
  • Access to the Cloud services of Amazon Web Services and/or Google Cloud Platform via 50$-100$ coupons.

Office hours

See the website of Enrico Gallinucci