MapReduce is a programming model introduced by Google to enable large-scale data processing in a parallel and distributed manner across compute clusters.
Tasks in MapReduce are divided into map and reduce phases, where map processes individual data records and reduces aggregates values for distinct keys.
MapReduce computation is distributed across a cluster with a master handling task scheduling and workers executing map and reduce tasks.
The MapReduce model is suitable for parallelizing data transformations on distinct data partitions followed by aggregation.
MapReduce was initially used by Google to build indexes for its search engine and is applicable to various data processing tasks.
MapReduce jobs involve partitioning data, executing map tasks in parallel, sorting key-value pairs, and aggregating results in reduce tasks.
MapReduce has influenced modern frameworks like Apache Spark and Google Cloud Dataflow with its fundamental distributed programming concepts.
While MapReduce introduced key distributed programming concepts, modern frameworks like Spark have evolved to offer more flexibility and efficiency.
The MapReduce model, though not commonly used today, played a significant role in the design of current distributed programming frameworks.
MapReduce tasks can be expressed using libraries like mrjob, simplifying the writing of mapper and reducer logic for data transformation.