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  5. AWS Glue vs Amazon Athena vs Apache Spark

AWS Glue vs Amazon Athena vs Apache Spark

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache Spark
Apache Spark
Stacks3.1K
Followers3.5K
Votes140
GitHub Stars42.2K
Forks28.9K
Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena
Stacks519
Followers840
Votes49
AWS Glue
AWS Glue
Stacks461
Followers819
Votes9

AWS Glue vs Amazon Athena vs Apache Spark: What are the differences?

Introduction

AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and Apache Spark are all popular tools used in big data processing and analytics tasks. Each tool has its own unique features and use cases that cater to different needs of data processing.

  1. Data Catalog and Metadata Store: AWS Glue is a fully managed data catalog and ETL service that provides a centralized metadata repository for all data assets, making it easy to discover, understand, and manage data. In contrast, Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that does not have a built-in data catalog but can directly query data stored in Amazon S3. Apache Spark, on the other hand, relies on external tools like Apache Hive or Apache Hadoop for metadata management.

  2. Query Execution Engine: Amazon Athena is specifically designed for querying data stored in Amazon S3 using standard SQL, making it well-suited for ad-hoc querying and analysis of data lakes. On the other hand, AWS Glue does not provide a query execution engine and is more focused on ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tasks. Apache Spark, a distributed computing framework, comes with its built-in query engine that provides high-performance data processing capabilities for large-scale data processing.

  3. Programming Support: Apache Spark offers a rich set of APIs in languages like Scala, Java, Python, and R, allowing developers to write complex data processing workflows and applications. In comparison, AWS Glue provides an SQL-based interface for defining ETL jobs, making it easier for users with SQL skills to perform data transformations. Amazon Athena supports standard SQL queries for data analysis and does not require any programming language knowledge.

  4. Scalability and Performance: Apache Spark is known for its scalability and performance, as it can handle large volumes of data and distribute processing across a cluster of machines efficiently. While AWS Glue and Amazon Athena are also scalable, they may have limitations based on the underlying infrastructure and service configurations. AWS Glue can automatically scale resources based on the workload, while Amazon Athena scales automatically to accommodate query volume but may have performance implications for complex queries.

  5. Cost Structure: AWS Glue and Amazon Athena follow a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the amount of data processed and resources used. Apache Spark, being an open-source framework, is free to use but requires management of infrastructure and resources. This cost structure can vary based on the specific use case and requirements of each tool, making it important to consider the cost implications when choosing a tool for data processing.

In Summary, the key differences between AWS Glue, Amazon Athena, and Apache Spark lie in their data catalog capabilities, query execution engines, programming support, scalability, performance, and cost structures, each catering to specific use cases and requirements in big data processing and analytics tasks.

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Advice on Apache Spark, Amazon Athena, AWS Glue

Aditya
Aditya

Mar 13, 2021

Review

you can use aws glue service to convert you pipe format data to parquet format , and thus you can achieve data compression . Now you should choose Redshift to copy your data as it is very huge. To manage your data, you should partition your data in S3 bucket and also divide your data across the redshift cluster

220k views220k
Comments
Vamshi
Vamshi

Data Engineer at Tata Consultancy Services

May 29, 2020

Needs adviceonPySparkPySparkAzure Data FactoryAzure Data FactoryDatabricksDatabricks

I have to collect different data from multiple sources and store them in a single cloud location. Then perform cleaning and transforming using PySpark, and push the end results to other applications like reporting tools, etc. What would be the best solution? I can only think of Azure Data Factory + Databricks. Are there any alternatives to #AWS services + Databricks?

269k views269k
Comments
Nilesh
Nilesh

Technical Architect at Self Employed

Jul 8, 2020

Needs adviceonElasticsearchElasticsearchKafkaKafka

We have a Kafka topic having events of type A and type B. We need to perform an inner join on both type of events using some common field (primary-key). The joined events to be inserted in Elasticsearch.

In usual cases, type A and type B events (with same key) observed to be close upto 15 minutes. But in some cases they may be far from each other, lets say 6 hours. Sometimes event of either of the types never come.

In all cases, we should be able to find joined events instantly after they are joined and not-joined events within 15 minutes.

576k views576k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache Spark
Apache Spark
Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena
AWS Glue
AWS Glue

Spark is a fast and general processing engine compatible with Hadoop data. It can run in Hadoop clusters through YARN or Spark's standalone mode, and it can process data in HDFS, HBase, Cassandra, Hive, and any Hadoop InputFormat. It is designed to perform both batch processing (similar to MapReduce) and new workloads like streaming, interactive queries, and machine learning.

Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.

A fully managed extract, transform, and load (ETL) service that makes it easy for customers to prepare and load their data for analytics.

Run programs up to 100x faster than Hadoop MapReduce in memory, or 10x faster on disk;Write applications quickly in Java, Scala or Python;Combine SQL, streaming, and complex analytics;Spark runs on Hadoop, Mesos, standalone, or in the cloud. It can access diverse data sources including HDFS, Cassandra, HBase, S3
-
Easy - AWS Glue automates much of the effort in building, maintaining, and running ETL jobs. AWS Glue crawls your data sources, identifies data formats, and suggests schemas and transformations. AWS Glue automatically generates the code to execute your data transformations and loading processes.; Integrated - AWS Glue is integrated across a wide range of AWS services.; Serverless - AWS Glue is serverless. There is no infrastructure to provision or manage. AWS Glue handles provisioning, configuration, and scaling of the resources required to run your ETL jobs on a fully managed, scale-out Apache Spark environment. You pay only for the resources used while your jobs are running.; Developer Friendly - AWS Glue generates ETL code that is customizable, reusable, and portable, using familiar technology - Scala, Python, and Apache Spark. You can also import custom readers, writers and transformations into your Glue ETL code. Since the code AWS Glue generates is based on open frameworks, there is no lock-in. You can use it anywhere.
Statistics
GitHub Stars
42.2K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
28.9K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
3.1K
Stacks
519
Stacks
461
Followers
3.5K
Followers
840
Followers
819
Votes
140
Votes
49
Votes
9
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 61
    Open-source
  • 48
    Fast and Flexible
  • 8
    One platform for every big data problem
  • 8
    Great for distributed SQL like applications
  • 6
    Easy to install and to use
Cons
  • 4
    Speed
Pros
  • 16
    Use SQL to analyze CSV files
  • 8
    Glue crawlers gives easy Data catalogue
  • 7
    Cheap
  • 6
    Query all my data without running servers 24x7
  • 4
    No data base servers yay
Pros
  • 9
    Managed Hive Metastore
Integrations
No integrations available
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Presto
Presto
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift
Amazon S3
Amazon S3
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS
MySQL
MySQL
Microsoft SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server
Amazon EMR
Amazon EMR
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora
Oracle
Oracle
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon Redshift Spectrum
Amazon Redshift Spectrum

What are some alternatives to Apache Spark, Amazon Athena, AWS Glue?

Presto

Presto

Distributed SQL Query Engine for Big Data

Apache Flink

Apache Flink

Apache Flink is an open source system for fast and versatile data analytics in clusters. Flink supports batch and streaming analytics, in one system. Analytical programs can be written in concise and elegant APIs in Java and Scala.

lakeFS

lakeFS

It is an open-source data version control system for data lakes. It provides a “Git for data” platform enabling you to implement best practices from software engineering on your data lake, including branching and merging, CI/CD, and production-like dev/test environments.

Druid

Druid

Druid is a distributed, column-oriented, real-time analytics data store that is commonly used to power exploratory dashboards in multi-tenant environments. Druid excels as a data warehousing solution for fast aggregate queries on petabyte sized data sets. Druid supports a variety of flexible filters, exact calculations, approximate algorithms, and other useful calculations.

Apache Kylin

Apache Kylin

Apache Kylin™ is an open source Distributed Analytics Engine designed to provide SQL interface and multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) on Hadoop/Spark supporting extremely large datasets, originally contributed from eBay Inc.

Splunk

Splunk

It provides the leading platform for Operational Intelligence. Customers use it to search, monitor, analyze and visualize machine data.

Apache Impala

Apache Impala

Impala is a modern, open source, MPP SQL query engine for Apache Hadoop. Impala is shipped by Cloudera, MapR, and Amazon. With Impala, you can query data, whether stored in HDFS or Apache HBase – including SELECT, JOIN, and aggregate functions – in real time.

Vertica

Vertica

It provides a best-in-class, unified analytics platform that will forever be independent from underlying infrastructure.

Azure Synapse

Azure Synapse

It is an analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives you the freedom to query data on your terms, using either serverless on-demand or provisioned resources—at scale. It brings these two worlds together with a unified experience to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate BI and machine learning needs.

Apache Kudu

Apache Kudu

A new addition to the open source Apache Hadoop ecosystem, Kudu completes Hadoop's storage layer to enable fast analytics on fast data.

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