Databricks vs Apache Spark

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Apache Spark vs Databricks: What are the differences?

Introduction

Apache Spark and Databricks are both widely used in big data processing and analytics. While Apache Spark is an open-source distributed computing system, Databricks is a unified analytics platform built on top of Apache Spark. Despite their similarities, there are key differences between the two.

  1. Integration and Collaboration: Databricks provides a collaborative environment where multiple data scientists, analysts, and engineers can work together seamlessly. It offers features like notebooks, dashboards, and shared workspaces for enhanced collaboration. In contrast, Apache Spark lacks built-in collaboration tools and requires additional setup to achieve similar functionalities.

  2. Managed Services: Databricks is a managed service in the cloud, offered by the company Databricks, where customers can easily deploy and scale their Spark applications without worrying about infrastructure management. On the other hand, Apache Spark needs to be deployed and managed by organizations themselves, either on-premises or in the cloud, which requires more effort and expertise.

  3. Automation and Integration: Databricks provides automation and integration features that simplify the deployment and management of Spark applications. It offers automated cluster management and integration with various data sources and tools such as AWS, Azure, and Tableau. While Apache Spark can also be integrated with other tools, it requires more manual configuration and setup.

  4. Security and Compliance: Databricks provides advanced security features like role-based access control, encryption, and compliance certifications that ensure data protection and meet industry standards. Apache Spark, being open-source, lacks some of these advanced security features out-of-the-box, although it can be enhanced using third-party solutions and custom implementations.

  5. Cost Structure: Databricks follows a subscription-based pricing model, where customers pay for the usage of the platform based on resources consumed. This includes the managed infrastructure, support, and additional features provided by Databricks. In contrast, Apache Spark is open-source and free to use, but organizations need to bear the costs of infrastructure, maintenance, and support themselves.

  6. Enterprise Support and Services: Databricks offers comprehensive enterprise support, including 24/7 technical assistance, training, and consulting services. They also have partnerships with major cloud providers like AWS and Azure, providing customers with a seamless experience. While Apache Spark has a large community and many resources available, enterprise-level support and services are generally not provided directly by the Apache Spark project.

In summary, Databricks provides a managed, collaborative, and feature-rich platform built on top of Apache Spark, whereas Apache Spark itself requires more manual configuration and lacks some of the advanced features and support provided by Databricks.

Advice on Databricks and Apache Spark
Nilesh Akhade
Technical Architect at Self Employed · | 5 upvotes · 546.5K views

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.

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Replies (2)
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ElasticsearchElasticsearch

The first solution that came to me is to use upsert to update ElasticSearch:

  1. Use the primary-key as ES document id
  2. Upsert the records to ES as soon as you receive them. As you are using upsert, the 2nd record of the same primary-key will not overwrite the 1st one, but will be merged with it.

Cons: The load on ES will be higher, due to upsert.

To use Flink:

  1. Create a KeyedDataStream by the primary-key
  2. In the ProcessFunction, save the first record in a State. At the same time, create a Timer for 15 minutes in the future
  3. When the 2nd record comes, read the 1st record from the State, merge those two, and send out the result, and clear the State and the Timer if it has not fired
  4. When the Timer fires, read the 1st record from the State and send out as the output record.
  5. Have a 2nd Timer of 6 hours (or more) if you are not using Windowing to clean up the State

Pro: if you have already having Flink ingesting this stream. Otherwise, I would just go with the 1st solution.

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Akshaya Rawat
Senior Specialist Platform at Publicis Sapient · | 3 upvotes · 385.4K views
Recommends
on
Apache SparkApache Spark

Please refer "Structured Streaming" feature of Spark. Refer "Stream - Stream Join" at https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/structured-streaming-programming-guide.html#stream-stream-joins . In short you need to specify "Define watermark delays on both inputs" and "Define a constraint on time across the two inputs"

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Pros of Databricks
Pros of Apache Spark
  • 1
    Best Performances on large datasets
  • 1
    True lakehouse architecture
  • 1
    Scalability
  • 1
    Databricks doesn't get access to your data
  • 1
    Usage Based Billing
  • 1
    Security
  • 1
    Data stays in your cloud account
  • 1
    Multicloud
  • 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
  • 3
    Works well for most Datascience usecases
  • 2
    Interactive Query
  • 2
    Machine learning libratimery, Streaming in real
  • 2
    In memory Computation

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Cons of Databricks
Cons of Apache Spark
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 4
      Speed

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    What is Databricks?

    Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, from the original creators of Apache Spark™, unifies data science and engineering across the Machine Learning lifecycle from data preparation to experimentation and deployment of ML applications.

    What is Apache Spark?

    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.

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    What are some alternatives to Databricks and Apache Spark?
    Snowflake
    Snowflake eliminates the administration and management demands of traditional data warehouses and big data platforms. Snowflake is a true data warehouse as a service running on Amazon Web Services (AWS)—no infrastructure to manage and no knobs to turn.
    Azure Databricks
    Accelerate big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions with Azure Databricks, a fast, easy and collaborative Apache Spark–based analytics service.
    Domino
    Use our cloud-hosted infrastructure to securely run your code on powerful hardware with a single command — without any changes to your code. If you have your own infrastructure, our Enterprise offering provides powerful, easy-to-use cluster management functionality behind your firewall.
    Confluent
    It is a data streaming platform based on Apache Kafka: a full-scale streaming platform, capable of not only publish-and-subscribe, but also the storage and processing of data within the stream
    Azure HDInsight
    It is a cloud-based service from Microsoft for big data analytics that helps organizations process large amounts of streaming or historical data.
    See all alternatives