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Apache Spark vs Spark SQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Spark
Ranking in Hadoop
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (4th), Java Frameworks (2nd)
Spark SQL
Ranking in Hadoop
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Hadoop category, the mindshare of Apache Spark is 18.0%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spark SQL is 9.9%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Hadoop
 

Featured Reviews

SurjitChoudhury - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers batch processing of data and in-memory processing in Spark greatly enhances performance
Spark supports real-time data processing through Spark Streaming. It allows for batch processing of data. If you have immediate data, like chat information, that needs to be processed in real-time, Spark Streaming is used. For data that can be evaluated later, batch processing with Apache Spark is suitable. Mostly, batch processing is utilized in our organization, but for streaming data processing, tools like Kafka are often integrated. In-memory processing in Spark greatly enhances performance, making it a hundred times faster than the previous MapReduce methods. This improvement is achieved through optimization techniques like caching, broadcasting, and partitioning, which help in optimizing queries for faster processing.
Lucas Dreyer - PeerSpot reviewer
Processing solution used for data engineering and transformation with the ability to process large datasets
It takes a bit of time to get used to using this solution versus Panda as it has a steep learning curve. You need quite a high level of skill with SQL in general to use this solution. If SQL is not someone's primary language, they might find it difficult to get used to. This solution could be improved if there was a bridge between Panda and Spark SQL such as translating from Panda operations to SQL and then working with those queries that are generated. In a future release, it would be useful to have a real time dashboard versus batch updates to Power BI.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product's deployment phase is easy."
"It is useful for handling large amounts of data. It is very useful for scientific purposes."
"The distribution of tasks, like the seamless map-reduce functionality, is quite impressive."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its speed and efficiency. It's much faster than other tools and excels in parallel data processing. Unlike tools like Python or JavaScript, which may struggle with parallel processing, it allows us to handle large volumes of data with more power easily."
"The most valuable feature of Apache Spark is its ease of use."
"Provides a lot of good documentation compared to other solutions."
"I feel the streaming is its best feature."
"The product is useful for analytics."
"The solution is easy to understand if you have basic knowledge of SQL commands."
"The stability was fine. It behaved as expected."
"It is a stable solution."
"The team members don't have to learn a new language and can implement complex tasks very easily using only SQL."
"Certain data sets that are very large are very difficult to process with Pandas and Python libraries. Spark SQL has helped us a lot with that."
"I find the Thrift connection valuable."
"The performance is one of the most important features. It has an API to process the data in a functional manner."
"The speed of getting data."
 

Cons

"In data analysis, you need to take real-time data from different data sources. You need to process this in a subsecond, do the transformation in a subsecond, and all that."
"This solution currently cannot support or distribute neural network related models, or deep learning related algorithms. We would like this functionality to be developed."
"Needs to provide an internal schedule to schedule spark jobs with monitoring capability."
"Apache Spark should add some resource management improvements to the algorithms."
"They could improve the issues related to programming language for the platform."
"The product could improve the user interface and make it easier for new users."
"The solution’s integration with other platforms should be improved."
"We use big data manager but we cannot use it as conditional data so whenever we're trying to fetch the data, it takes a bit of time."
"I've experienced some incompatibilities when using the Delta Lake format."
"There are many inconsistencies in syntax for the different querying tasks."
"The solution needs to include graphing capabilities. Including financial charts would help improve everything overall."
"SparkUI could have more advanced versions of the performance and the queries and all."
"It takes a bit of time to get used to using this solution versus Pandas as it has a steep learning curve."
"It would be useful if Spark SQL integrated with some data visualization tools."
"This solution could be improved by adding monitoring and integration for the EMR."
"There should be better integration with other solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"Since we are using the Apache Spark version, not the data bricks version, it is an Apache license version, the support and resolution of the bug are actually late or delayed. The Apache license is free."
"Apache Spark is open-source. You have to pay only when you use any bundled product, such as Cloudera."
"The product is expensive, considering the setup."
"Apache Spark is an expensive solution."
"The solution is affordable and there are no additional licensing costs."
"Considering the product version used in my company, I feel that the tool is not costly since the product is available for free."
"Apache Spark is an open-source solution, and there is no cost involved in deploying the solution on-premises."
"The solution is open-sourced and free."
"The on-premise solution is quite expensive in terms of hardware, setting up the cluster, memory, hardware and resources. It depends on the use case, but in our case with a shared cluster which is quite large, it is quite expensive."
"The solution is bundled with Palantir Foundry at no extra charge."
"There is no license or subscription for this solution."
"We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small."
"We use the open-source version, so we do not have direct support from Apache."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Compared to other solutions like Doc DB, Spark is more costly due to the need for extensive infrastructure. It requires significant investment in infrastructure, which can be expensive. While cloud...
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
The main concern is the overhead of Java when distributed processing is not necessary. In such cases, operations can often be done on one node, making Spark's distributed mode unnecessary. Conseque...
What do you like most about Spark SQL?
Spark SQL's efficiency in managing distributed data and its simplicity in expressing complex operations make it an essential part of our data pipeline.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spark SQL?
We don't have to pay for licenses with this solution because we are working in a small market, and we rely on open-source because the budgets of projects are very small.
What needs improvement with Spark SQL?
In terms of improvement, the only thing that could be enhanced is the stability aspect of Spark SQL. There could be additional features that I haven't explored but the current solution for working ...
 

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Sample Customers

NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, Alibaba Taobao, Kenshoo, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Spark vs. Spark SQL and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.