This book takes its reader on a journey through Apache Giraph a popular distributed graph
processing platform designed to bring the power of big data processing to graph data. Designed
as a step-by-step self-study guide for everyone interested in large-scale graph processing it
describes the fundamental abstractions of the system its programming models and various
techniques for using the system to process graph data at scale including the implementation of
several popular and advanced graph analytics algorithms. The book is organized as follows:
Chapter 1 starts by providing a general background of the big data phenomenon and a general
introduction to the Apache Giraph system its abstraction programming model and design
architecture. Next chapter 2 focuses on Giraph as a platform and how to use it. Based on a
sample job even more advanced topics like monitoring the Giraph application lifecycle and
different methods for monitoring Giraph jobs are explained. Chapter 3 then provides an
introduction to Giraph programming introduces the basic Giraph graph model and explains how to
write Giraph programs. In turn Chapter 4 discusses in detail the implementation of some
popular graph algorithms including PageRank connected components shortest paths and triangle
closing. Chapter 5 focuses on advanced Giraph programming discussing common Giraph algorithmic
optimizations tunable Giraph configurations that determine the system¿s utilization of the
underlying resources and how to write a custom graph input and output format. Lastly chapter
6 highlights two systems that have been introduced to tackle the challenge of large scale graph
processing GraphX and GraphLab and explains the main commonalities and differences between
these systems and Apache Giraph. This book serves as an essential reference guide for students
researchers and practitioners in the domain of large scale graph processing. It offers
step-by-step guidance with several code examples and the complete source code available in the
related github repository. Students will find a comprehensive introduction to and hands-on
practice with tackling large scale graph processing problems using the Apache Giraph system
while researchers will discover thorough coverage of the emerging and ongoing advancements in
big graph processing systems.
