Using language-independent data structures

A criticism often leveled at Hadoop, and which the community has been working hard to address, is that it is very Java-centric. It may appear strange to accuse a project fully implemented in Java of being Java-centric, but the consideration is from a client's perspective.

We have shown how Hadoop Streaming allows the use of scripting languages to implement map and reduce tasks and how Pipes provides similar mechanisms for C++. However, one area that does remain Java-only is the nature of the input formats supported by Hadoop MapReduce. The most efficient format is SequenceFile, a binary splittable container that supports compression. However, SequenceFiles have only a Java API; they cannot be written or ...

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