Hadoop or not to Hadoop

I have been a relational database man for many years. When you said the word “data” only one thing popped into mind – relational database. Now days things are changing. With so many disparate data sources out there it is becoming increasingly more difficult to harvest that data, let alone use it in some meaningful way. I know Google had this challenge and developed MapReduce. Has anyone ever used Hadoop? My first read of this elephant is that there is still a lot of development that must occur to harvest the data and then tons of minutia that must be written in Java just to organize the information into some usable format.

I really would like the opinion of folks that have actually installed it (in a cloud – not locally) and then developed something useful with it. My gut tells me this has some serious potential. However, I don’t want to even go down this path and install all the components unless I can be convinced this is something I cannot do without.

I think I understand the cloud piece. You purchase that aspect of it from Amazon or RackSpace, not sure about Windows Azure yet, but in any case that handles the infrastructure side of things. Now that you have that out of the way and you have downloaded the client and all the goodies that make up the client piece you are ready to go. Now what? Do you really have to start developing in Java to craft up your map and reduce segments? Do you really have to think through all the workflow of what output goes into what input? Again, my gut tells me you do. I am simply trying to justify learning this, and then assisting small to mid size organizations in implementing it.

Thanks for at least reading this far. Comments welcome.

Fell on the shutter release…

I like trees… they are easy to sneak up on and don’t run away. This makes them great subjects for a photag like myself. Eyeball some of these shots and let me know what you think.

Some of pics have been altered – I enjoy messing with color. You’ll also notice a few have a bald eagle in them. Look closely. I nabbed a few shots of him sitting on a branch waiting for dinner to fly by.

I couldn’t resist this one. Not that I am a big fan of creating something from a bunch of old bottles, but like I said above – I like color. This angle just caught my attention.

 

OK, OK, I too like snapping sunrises and sunsets. On these I was able to nab the Sun just coming up. Good thing I caught it in time, it was a little off to the right and I was able to adjust it before it got too high up in the sky where I couldn’t reach it.

 

I had to snap this. I am impressed at how close these birds get while cruising for food. They only flap their wings when absolutely necessary.

I like the contrast of these next two pics.

Oh well… the same pics and more are on my picasa site. I have not watermarked them so you can download them should you find any use for them.

Next gig is going to be double exposure. Can’t wait to start playing with this. Stay tuned.