Cascading for the Impatient

Welcome to Cascading for the Impatient, a tutorial for Cascading 2.2 to get you started. Quickly. Like, yesterday.

This set of progressive coding examples starts with a simple file copy and builds up to a MapReduce implementation of the TF-IDF algorithm.

You can read the full series here: http://docs.cascading.org/impatient/

If you have a question or run into any problems send an email to the cascading-user-list.

Part 1

• Implements simplest Cascading app possible
• Copies each TSV line from source tap to sink tap
• Roughly, in about a dozen lines of code
• Physical plan: 1 Mapper

Part 2

• Implements a simple example of WordCount
• Uses a regex to split the input text lines into a token stream
• Generates a DOT file, to show the Cascading flow graphically
• Physical plan: 1 Mapper, 1 Reducer

Part 3

• Uses a custom Function to scrub the token stream
• Discusses when to use standard Operations vs. creating custom ones
• Physical plan: 1 Mapper, 1 Reducer

Part 4

• Shows how to use a HashJoin on two pipes
• Filters a list of stop words out of the token stream
• Physical plan: 1 Mapper, 1 Reducer

Part 5

• Calculates TF-IDF using an ExpressionFunction
• Shows how to use a CountBy, SumBy, and a CoGroup
• Physical plan: 10 Mappers, 8 Reducers

Part 6

• Includes unit tests in the build
• Shows how to use other TDD features: checkpoints, assertions, traps, debug
• Physical plan: 11 Mappers, 8 Reducers

Part 7

• Implements switch to run the example in local mode (without Apache Hadoop)
• Uses an R script to analyze/visualize the results

Part 8

• Scalding equivalents of previous examples in Cascading