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Apache Spark VS Jupyter

Compare Apache Spark VS Jupyter and see what are their differences

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Apache Spark logo Apache Spark

Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.

Jupyter logo Jupyter

Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.
  • Apache Spark Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-31
  • Jupyter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22

Apache Spark features and specs

  • Speed
    Apache Spark processes data in-memory, significantly increasing the processing speed of data tasks compared to traditional disk-based engines.
  • Ease of Use
    Spark offers high-level APIs in Java, Scala, Python, and R, making it accessible to a broad range of developers and data scientists.
  • Advanced Analytics
    Spark supports advanced analytics, including machine learning, graph processing, and real-time streaming, which can be executed in the same application.
  • Scalability
    Spark can handle both small- and large-scale data processing tasks, scaling seamlessly from a single machine to thousands of servers.
  • Support for Various Data Sources
    Spark can integrate with a wide variety of data sources, including HDFS, Apache HBase, Apache Hive, Cassandra, and many others.
  • Active Community
    Spark has a vibrant and active community, providing a wealth of extensions, tools, and support options.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Spark

  • Memory Consumption
    Spark's in-memory processing can be resource-intensive, requiring substantial amounts of RAM, which can drive up costs for large-scale deployments.
  • Complexity in Configuration
    To optimize performance, Spark requires careful configuration and tuning, which can be complex and time-consuming.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of use, mastering the full range of Spark's features and best practices can take considerable time and effort.
  • Latency for Small Data
    For smaller datasets or low-latency requirements, Spark might not be the most efficient choice, as other technologies could offer better performance.
  • Integration Overhead
    Though Spark integrates with many systems, incorporating it into an existing data infrastructure can introduce additional overhead and complexity.
  • Community Support Variability
    While the community is active, the support and quality of third-party libraries and tools can be inconsistent, leading to potential challenges in implementation.

Jupyter features and specs

  • Interactive Computing
    Jupyter allows real-time interaction with the data and code, providing immediate feedback and making it easier to experiment and iterate.
  • Rich Media Output
    It supports output in various formats including HTML, images, videos, LaTeX, and more, enhancing the ability to visualize and interpret results.
  • Language Agnostic
    Jupyter supports multiple programming languages through its kernel system (e.g., Python, R, Julia), allowing flexibility in the choice of tools.
  • Collaborative Features
    It enables collaboration through shared notebooks, version control, and platform integrations like GitHub.
  • Educational Tool
    Jupyter is widely used for teaching, thanks to its easy-to-use interface and ability to combine narrative text with code, making it ideal for assignments and tutorials.
  • Extensibility
    Jupyter is highly extensible with a large ecosystem of plugins and extensions available for various functionalities.

Possible disadvantages of Jupyter

  • Performance Issues
    For larger datasets and more complex computations, Jupyter can be slower compared to running scripts directly in a dedicated IDE.
  • Version Control Challenges
    Managing version control for Jupyter notebooks can be cumbersome, as they are not plain text files and include metadata that can make diffing and merging complex.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running Jupyter notebooks can be resource-intensive, especially when working with multiple large notebooks simultaneously.
  • Security Concerns
    Because Jupyter allows code execution in the browser, it can be a potential security risk if notebooks from untrusted sources are run without restrictions.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and ensuring that the notebook runs consistently across different environments can be challenging.
  • Less Suitable for Production
    Jupyter is often considered more as a research and educational tool rather than a production environment; transitioning from a notebook to production code can require significant refactoring.

Apache Spark videos

Weekly Apache Spark live Code Review -- look at StringIndexer multi-col (Scala) & Python testing

More videos:

  • Review - What's New in Apache Spark 3.0.0
  • Review - Apache Spark for Data Engineering and Analysis - Overview

Jupyter videos

What is Jupyter Notebook?

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Jupyter Notebook Tutorial: Introduction, Setup, and Walkthrough
  • Review - JupyterLab: The Next Generation Jupyter Web Interface

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Spark and Jupyter)
Databases
100 100%
0% 0
Data Science And Machine Learning
Big Data
100 100%
0% 0
Data Dashboard
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Spark and Jupyter

Apache Spark Reviews

15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Apache Spark is an open source data processing and analytics engine that can handle large amounts of data -- upward of several petabytes, according to proponents. Spark's ability to rapidly process data has fueled significant growth in the use of the platform since it was created in 2009, helping to make the Spark project one of the largest open source communities among big...
Top 15 Kafka Alternatives Popular In 2021
Apache Spark is a well-known, general-purpose, open-source analytics engine for large-scale, core data processing. It is known for its high-performance quality for data processing – batch and streaming with the help of its DAG scheduler, query optimizer, and engine. Data streams are processed in real-time and hence it is quite fast and efficient. Its machine learning...
5 Best-Performing Tools that Build Real-Time Data Pipeline
Apache Spark is an open-source and flexible in-memory framework which serves as an alternative to map-reduce for handling batch, real-time analytics and data processing workloads. It provides native bindings for the Java, Scala, Python, and R programming languages, and supports SQL, streaming data, machine learning and graph processing. From its beginning in the AMPLab at...

Jupyter Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Once you install nteract, you can open your notebook without having to launch the Jupyter Notebook or visit the Jupyter Lab. The nteract environment is similar to Jupyter Notebook but with more control and the possibility of extension via libraries like Papermill (notebook parameterization), Scrapbook (saving your notebook’s data and photos), and Bookstore (versioning).
Source: lakefs.io
7 best Colab alternatives in 2023
JupyterLab is the next-generation user interface for Project Jupyter. Like Colab, it's an interactive development environment for working with notebooks, code, and data. However, JupyterLab offers more flexibility as it can be self-hosted, enabling users to use their own hardware resources. It also supports extensions for integrating other services, making it a highly...
Source: deepnote.com
12 Best Jupyter Notebook Alternatives [2023] – Features, pros & cons, pricing
Jupyter Notebook is a widely popular tool for data scientists to work on data science projects. This article reviews the top 12 alternatives to Jupyter Notebook that offer additional features and capabilities.
Source: noteable.io
15 data science tools to consider using in 2021
Jupyter Notebook's roots are in the programming language Python -- it originally was part of the IPython interactive toolkit open source project before being split off in 2014. The loose combination of Julia, Python and R gave Jupyter its name; along with supporting those three languages, Jupyter has modular kernels for dozens of others.
Top 4 Python and Data Science IDEs for 2021 and Beyond
Yep — it’s the most popular IDE among data scientists. Jupyter Notebooks made interactivity a thing, and Jupyter Lab took the user experience to the next level. It’s a minimalistic IDE that does the essentials out of the box and provides options and hacks for more advanced use.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Jupyter should be more popular than Apache Spark. It has been mentiond 216 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Spark mentions (70)

  • Every Database Will Support Iceberg — Here's Why
    Apache Iceberg defines a table format that separates how data is stored from how data is queried. Any engine that implements the Iceberg integration — Spark, Flink, Trino, DuckDB, Snowflake, RisingWave — can read and/or write Iceberg data directly. - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • How to Reduce Big Data Analytics Costs by 90% with Karpenter and Spark
    Apache Spark powers large-scale data analytics and machine learning, but as workloads grow exponentially, traditional static resource allocation leads to 30–50% resource waste due to idle Executors and suboptimal instance selection. - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
  • Unveiling the Apache License 2.0: A Deep Dive into Open Source Freedom
    One of the key attributes of Apache License 2.0 is its flexible nature. Permitting use in both proprietary and open source environments, it has become the go-to choice for innovative projects ranging from the Apache HTTP Server to large-scale initiatives like Apache Spark and Hadoop. This flexibility is not solely legal; it is also philosophical. The license is designed to encourage transparency and maintain a... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • The Application of Java Programming In Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence
    [1] S. Russell and P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Pearson, 2020. [2] F. Chollet, Deep Learning with Python. Manning Publications, 2018. [3] C. C. Aggarwal, Data Mining: The Textbook. Springer, 2015. [4] J. Dean and S. Ghemawat, "MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters," Communications of the ACM, vol. 51, no. 1, pp. 107-113, 2008. [5] Apache Software Foundation, "Apache... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Automating Enhanced Due Diligence in Regulated Applications
    If you're designing an event-based pipeline, you can use a data streaming tool like Kafka to process data as it's collected by the pipeline. For a setup that already has data stored, you can use tools like Apache Spark to batch process and clean it before moving ahead with the pipeline. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
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Jupyter mentions (216)

  • The 3 Best Python Frameworks To Build UIs for AI Apps
    Showcase and share: Easily embed UIs in Jupyter Notebook, Google Colab or share them on Hugging Face using a public link. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • LangChain: From Chains to Threads
    LangChain wasn’t designed in isolation — it was built in the data pipeline world, where every data engineer’s tool of choice was Jupyter Notebooks. Jupyter was an innovative tool, making pipeline programming easy to experiment with, iterate on, and debug. It was a perfect fit for machine learning workflows, where you preprocess data, train models, analyze outputs, and fine-tune parameters — all in a structured,... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence & its role in an AGI World
    Leverage versatile resources to prototype and refine your ideas, such as Jupyter Notebooks for rapid iterations, Google Colabs for cloud-based experimentation, OpenAI’s API Playground for testing and fine-tuning prompts, and Anthropic's Prompt Engineering Library for inspiration and guidance on advanced prompting techniques. For frontend experimentation, tools like v0 are invaluable, providing a seamless way to... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Jupyter Notebook for Java
    Lately I've been working on Langgraph4J which is a Java implementation of the more famous Langgraph.js which is a Javascript library used to create agent and multi-agent workflows by Langchain. Interesting note is that [Langchain.js] uses Javascript Jupyter notebooks powered by a DENO Jupiter Kernel to implement and document How-Tos. So, I faced a dilemma on how to use (or possibly simulate) the same approach in... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • JIRA Analytics with Pandas
    One of the most convenient ways to play with datasets is to utilize Jupyter. If you are not familiar with this tool, do not worry. I will show how to use it to solve our problem. For local experiments, I like to use DataSpell by JetBrains, but there are services available online and for free. One of the most well-known services among data scientists is Kaggle. However, their notebooks don't allow you to make... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Spark and Jupyter, you can also consider the following products

Apache Flink - Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

Hadoop - Open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing

Databricks - Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

Apache Hive - Apache Hive data warehouse software facilitates querying and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage.

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.