Spark SQL - Quick Guide

Spark - Introduction
Industries are using Hadoop extensively to analyze their data sets. The reason is that Hadoop
framework is based on a simple programming model (MapReduce) and it enables a
computing solution that is scalable, flexible, fault-tolerant and cost effective. Here, the main
concern is to maintain speed in processing large datasets in terms of waiting time between
queries and waiting time to run the program.
Spark was introduced by Apache Software Foundation for speeding up the Hadoop
computational computing software process.
As against a common belief, Spark is not a modified version of Hadoop and is not, really,
dependent on Hadoop because it has its own cluster management. Hadoop is just one of the
ways to implement Spark.
Spark uses Hadoop in two ways – one is storage and second is processing. Since Spark has
its own cluster management computation, it uses Hadoop for storage purpose only.

Apache Spark
Apache Spark is a lightning-fast cluster computing technology, designed for fast
computation. It is based on Hadoop MapReduce and it extends the MapReduce model to
efficiently use it for more types of computations, which includes interactive queries and
stream processing. The main feature of Spark is its in-memory cluster computing that
increases the processing speed of an application.
Spark is designed to cover a wide range of workloads such as batch applications, iterative
algorithms, interactive queries and streaming. Apart from supporting all these workload in a
respective system, it reduces the management burden of maintaining separate tools.

Evolution of Apache Spark

Spark is one of Hadoop’s sub project developed in 2009 in UC Berkeley’s AMPLab by Matei
Zaharia. It was Open Sourced in 2010 under a BSD license. It was donated to Apache
software foundation in 2013, and now Apache Spark has become a top level Apache project
from Feb-2014.

Features of Apache Spark

Apache Spark has following features.
 Speed − Spark helps to run an application in Hadoop cluster, up to 100 times
faster in memory, and 10 times faster when running on disk. This is possible
by reducing number of read/write operations to disk. It stores the intermediate
processing data in memory.
 Supports multiple languages − Spark provides built-in APIs in Java, Scala, or
Python. Therefore, you can write applications in different languages. Spark
comes up with 80 high-level operators for interactive querying.
 Advanced Analytics − Spark not only supports ‘Map’ and ‘reduce’. It also
supports SQL queries, Streaming data, Machine learning (ML), and Graph
algorithms.
Spark Built on Hadoop
The following diagram shows three ways of how Spark can be built with Hadoop
components.

There are three ways of Spark deployment as explained below.

 Standalone − Spark Standalone deployment means Spark occupies the place
on top of HDFS(Hadoop Distributed File System) and space is allocated for
HDFS, explicitly. Here, Spark and MapReduce will run side by side to cover
all spark jobs on cluster.
 Hadoop Yarn − Hadoop Yarn deployment means, simply, spark runs on Yarn
without any pre-installation or root access required. It helps to integrate Spark
into Hadoop ecosystem or Hadoop stack. It allows other components to run on
top of stack.
 Spark in MapReduce (SIMR) − Spark in MapReduce is used to launch spark
job in addition to standalone deployment. With SIMR, user can start Spark and
uses its shell without any administrative access.
Components of Spark
The following illustration depicts the different components of Spark.

Apache Spark Core

Spark Core is the underlying general execution engine for spark platform that all other
functionality is built upon. It provides In-Memory computing and referencing datasets in
external storage systems.
Spark SQL
Spark SQL is a component on top of Spark Core that introduces a new data abstraction called
SchemaRDD, which provides support for structured and semi-structured data.
Spark Streaming
Spark Streaming leverages Spark Core's fast scheduling capability to perform streaming
analytics. It ingests data in mini-batches and performs RDD (Resilient Distributed Datasets)
transformations on those mini-batches of data.
MLlib (Machine Learning Library)
MLlib is a distributed machine learning framework above Spark because of the distributed
memory-based Spark architecture. It is, according to benchmarks, done by the MLlib
developers against the Alternating Least Squares (ALS) implementations. Spark MLlib is
nine times as fast as the Hadoop disk-based version of Apache Mahout (before Mahout
gained a Spark interface).
GraphX
GraphX is a distributed graph-processing framework on top of Spark. It provides an API for
expressing graph computation that can model the user-defined graphs by using Pregel
abstraction API. It also provides an optimized runtime for this abstraction.

Spark – RDD
Resilient Distributed Datasets
Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD) is a fundamental data structure of Spark. It is an
immutable distributed collection of objects. Each dataset in RDD is divided into logical
partitions, which may be computed on different nodes of the cluster. RDDs can contain any
type of Python, Java, or Scala objects, including user-defined classes.
Formally, an RDD is a read-only, partitioned collection of records. RDDs can be created
through deterministic operations on either data on stable storage or other RDDs. RDD is a
fault-tolerant collection of elements that can be operated on in parallel.
There are two ways to create RDDs − parallelizing an existing collection in your driver
program, or referencing a dataset in an external storage system, such as a shared file system,
HDFS, HBase, or any data source offering a Hadoop Input Format.
Spark makes use of the concept of RDD to achieve faster and efficient MapReduce
operations. Let us first discuss how MapReduce operations take place and why they are not
so efficient.

Data Sharing is Slow in MapReduce

MapReduce is widely adopted for processing and generating large datasets with a parallel,
distributed algorithm on a cluster. It allows users to write parallel computations, using a set of
high-level operators, without having to worry about work distribution and fault tolerance.
Unfortunately, in most current frameworks, the only way to reuse data between computations
(Ex: between two MapReduce jobs) is to write it to an external stable storage system (Ex:
HDFS). Although this framework provides numerous abstractions for accessing a cluster’s
computational resources, users still want more.
Both Iterative and Interactive applications require faster data sharing across parallel jobs.
Data sharing is slow in MapReduce due to replication, serialization, and disk IO. Regarding
storage system, most of the Hadoop applications, they spend more than 90% of the time
doing HDFS read-write operations.

Iterative Operations on MapReduce

Reuse intermediate results across multiple computations in multi-stage applications. The
following illustration explains how the current framework works, while doing the iterative
operations on MapReduce. This incurs substantial overheads due to data replication, disk I/O,
and serialization, which makes the system slow.

Interactive Operations on MapReduce

User runs ad-hoc queries on the same subset of data. Each query will do the disk I/O on the
stable storage, which can dominates application execution time.
The following illustration explains how the current framework works while doing the
interactive queries on MapReduce.
Data Sharing using Spark RDD
Data sharing is slow in MapReduce due to replication, serialization, and disk IO. Most of
the Hadoop applications, they spend more than 90% of the time doing HDFS read-write
operations.
Recognizing this problem, researchers developed a specialized framework called Apache
Spark. The key idea of spark is Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD); it supports in-memory
processing computation. This means, it stores the state of memory as an object across the jobs
and the object is sharable between those jobs. Data sharing in memory is 10 to 100 times
faster than network and Disk.
Let us now try to find out how iterative and interactive operations take place in Spark RDD.

Iterative Operations on Spark RDD

The illustration given below shows the iterative operations on Spark RDD. It will store
intermediate results in a distributed memory instead of Stable storage (Disk) and make the
system faster.
Note − If the Distributed memory (RAM) in sufficient to store intermediate results (State of
the JOB), then it will store those results on the disk

Interactive Operations on Spark RDD

This illustration shows interactive operations on Spark RDD. If different queries are run on
the same set of data repeatedly, this particular data can be kept in memory for better
execution times.

By default, each transformed RDD may be recomputed each time you run an action on it.
However, you may also persist an RDD in memory, in which case Spark will keep the
elements around on the cluster for much faster access, the next time you query it. There is
also support for persisting RDDs on disk, or replicated across multiple nodes.
 Spark - Installation
Spark is Hadoop’s sub-project. Therefore, it is better to install Spark into a Linux based
system. The following steps show how to install Apache Spark.

Step1: Verifying Java Installation

Java installation is one of the mandatory things in installing Spark. Try the following
command to verify the JAVA version.
$java -version
If Java is already, installed on your system, you get to see the following response −
java version "1.7.0_71"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_71-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.0-b02, mixed mode)
In case you do not have Java installed on your system, then Install Java before proceeding to
next step.

Step2: Verifying Scala Installation

You should Scala language to implement Spark. So let us verify Scala installation using
following command.
$scala -version
If Scala is already installed on your system, you get to see the following response −
Scala code runner version 2.11.6 -- Copyright 2002-2013, LAMP/EPFL
In case you don’t have Scala installed on your system, then proceed to next step for Scala
installation.

Step3: Downloading Scala

Download the latest version of Scala by visit the following link Download Scala. For this
tutorial, we are using scala-2.11.6 version. After downloading, you will find the Scala tar file
in the download folder.

Step4: Installing Scala

Follow the below given steps for installing Scala.
Extract the Scala tar file
Type the following command for extracting the Scala tar file.
$ tar xvf scala-2.11.6.tgz
Move Scala software files
Use the following commands for moving the Scala software files, to respective
directory (/usr/local/scala).
$ su –
Password:
# cd /home/Hadoop/Downloads/
# mv scala-2.11.6 /usr/local/scala
# exit
Set PATH for Scala
Use the following command for setting PATH for Scala.
$ export PATH = $PATH:/usr/local/scala/bin
Verifying Scala Installation
After installation, it is better to verify it. Use the following command for verifying Scala
installation.
$scala -version
If Scala is already installed on your system, you get to see the following response −
Scala code runner version 2.11.6 -- Copyright 2002-2013, LAMP/EPFL
Step5: Downloading Apache Spark
Download the latest version of Spark by visiting the following link Download Spark. For this
tutorial, we are using spark-1.3.1-bin-hadoop2.6 version. After downloading it, you will
find the Spark tar file in the download folder.

Step6: Installing Spark

Follow the steps given below for installing Spark.
Extracting Spark tar
The following command for extracting the spark tar file.
$ tar xvf spark-1.3.1-bin-hadoop2.6.tgz
Moving Spark software files
The following commands for moving the Spark software files to respective
directory (/usr/local/spark).
$ su –
Password:
# cd /home/Hadoop/Downloads/
# mv spark-1.3.1-bin-hadoop2.6 /usr/local/spark
# exit
Setting up the environment for Spark
Add the following line to ~/.bashrc file. It means adding the location, where the spark
software file are located to the PATH variable.
export PATH = $PATH:/usr/local/spark/bin
Use the following command for sourcing the ~/.bashrc file.
$ source ~/.bashrc
Step7: Verifying the Spark Installation
Write the following command for opening Spark shell.
$spark-shell
If spark is installed successfully then you will find the following output.
Spark assembly has been built with Hive, including Datanucleus jars on classpath
Using Spark's default log4j profile: org/apache/spark/log4j-defaults.properties
15/06/04 15:25:22 INFO SecurityManager: Changing view acls to: hadoop
15/06/04 15:25:22 INFO SecurityManager: Changing modify acls to: hadoop
disabled; ui acls disabled; users with view permissions: Set(hadoop); users with modify
permissions: Set(hadoop)
15/06/04 15:25:22 INFO HttpServer: Starting HTTP Server
15/06/04 15:25:23 INFO Utils: Successfully started service 'HTTP class server' on port 43292.
Welcome to
____ __
/ __/__ ___ _____ / /__
_\ \/ _ \/ _ `/ __/ ' _/
/___/ .__/\_,_/_/ /_/\_\ version 3.2.4
/_/
Using Scala version 2.10.4 (Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM, Java 1.7.0_71)
Type in expressions to have them evaluated.
Spark context available as sc
scala>
Spark SQL - Introduction
Spark introduces a programming module for structured data processing called Spark SQL. It
provides a programming abstraction called DataFrame and can act as distributed SQL query
engine.

Features of Spark SQL

The following are the features of Spark SQL −
 Integrated − Seamlessly mix SQL queries with Spark programs. Spark SQL
lets you query structured data as a distributed dataset (RDD) in Spark, with
integrated APIs in Python, Scala and Java. This tight integration makes it easy
to run SQL queries alongside complex analytic algorithms.
 Unified Data Access − Load and query data from a variety of sources.
Schema-RDDs provide a single interface for efficiently working with
structured data, including Apache Hive tables, parquet files and JSON files.
 Hive Compatibility − Run unmodified Hive queries on existing warehouses.
Spark SQL reuses the Hive frontend and MetaStore, giving you full
compatibility with existing Hive data, queries, and UDFs. Simply install it
alongside Hive.
 Standard Connectivity − Connect through JDBC or ODBC. Spark SQL
includes a server mode with industry standard JDBC and ODBC connectivity.
 Scalability − Use the same engine for both interactive and long queries. Spark
SQL takes advantage of the RDD model to support mid-query fault tolerance,
letting it scale to large jobs too. Do not worry about using a different engine
for historical data.
Spark SQL Architecture
The following illustration explains the architecture of Spark SQL −
This architecture contains three layers namely, Language API, Schema RDD, and Data
Sources.
 Language API − Spark is compatible with different languages and Spark
SQL. It is also, supported by these languages- API (python, scala, java,
HiveQL).
 Schema RDD − Spark Core is designed with special data structure called
RDD. Generally, Spark SQL works on schemas, tables, and records. Therefore,
we can use the Schema RDD as temporary table. We can call this Schema
RDD as Data Frame.
 Data Sources − Usually the Data source for spark-core is a text file, Avro file,
etc. However, the Data Sources for Spark SQL is different. Those are Parquet
file, JSON document, HIVE tables, and Cassandra database.
We will discuss more about these in the subsequent chapters.

Spark SQL - DataFrames

A DataFrame is a distributed collection of data, which is organized into named columns.
Conceptually, it is equivalent to relational tables with good optimization techniques.
A DataFrame can be constructed from an array of different sources such as Hive tables,
Structured Data files, external databases, or existing RDDs. This API was designed for
modern Big Data and data science applications taking inspiration from DataFrame in R
Programming and Pandas in Python.

Features of DataFrame
Here is a set of few characteristic features of DataFrame −
 Ability to process the data in the size of Kilobytes to Petabytes on a single
node cluster to large cluster.
 Supports different data formats (Avro, csv, elastic search, and Cassandra) and
storage systems (HDFS, HIVE tables, mysql, etc).
  State of art optimization and code generation through the Spark SQL Catalyst
optimizer (tree transformation framework).
 Can be easily integrated with all Big Data tools and frameworks via Spark-
Core.
 Provides API for Python, Java, Scala, and R Programming.
SQLContext
SQLContext is a class and is used for initializing the functionalities of Spark SQL.
SparkContext class object (sc) is required for initializing SQLContext class object.
The following command is used for initializing the SparkContext through spark-shell.
$ spark-shell
By default, the SparkContext object is initialized with the name sc when the spark-shell
starts.
Use the following command to create SQLContext.
scala> val sqlcontext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
Example
Let us consider an example of employee records in a JSON file named employee.json. Use
the following commands to create a DataFrame (df) and read a JSON document
named employee.json with the following content.
employee.json − Place this file in the directory where the current scala> pointer is located.
{
{"id" : "1201", "name" : "satish", "age" : "25"}
{"id" : "1202", "name" : "krishna", "age" : "28"}
{"id" : "1203", "name" : "amith", "age" : "39"}
{"id" : "1204", "name" : "javed", "age" : "23"}
{"id" : "1205", "name" : "prudvi", "age" : "23"}
}

DataFrame Operations
DataFrame provides a domain-specific language for structured data manipulation. Here, we
include some basic examples of structured data processing using DataFrames.
Follow the steps given below to perform DataFrame operations −
Read the JSON Document
First, we have to read the JSON document. Based on this, generate a DataFrame named (dfs).
Use the following command to read the JSON document named employee.json. The data is
shown as a table with the fields − id, name, and age.
scala> val dfs = sqlContext.read.json("employee.json")
Output − The field names are taken automatically from employee.json.
dfs: org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame = [age: string, id: string, name: string]
Show the Data
If you want to see the data in the DataFrame, then use the following command.
scala> dfs.show()
Output − You can see the employee data in a tabular format.
<console>:22, took 0.052610 s
+----+------+--------+
|age | id | name |
+----+------+--------+
| 25 | 1201 | satish |
| 28 | 1202 | krishna|
| 39 | 1203 | amith |
| 23 | 1204 | javed |
| 23 | 1205 | prudvi |
+----+------+--------+
Use printSchema Method
If you want to see the Structure (Schema) of the DataFrame, then use the following
command.
scala> dfs.printSchema()
Output
root
|-- age: string (nullable = true)
|-- id: string (nullable = true)
|-- name: string (nullable = true)
Use Select Method
Use the following command to fetch name-column among three columns from the
DataFrame.
scala> dfs.select("name").show()
Output − You can see the values of the name column.
<console>:22, took 0.044023 s
+--------+
| name |
+--------+
| satish |
| krishna|
| amith |
| javed |
| prudvi |
+--------+
Use Age Filter
Use the following command for finding the employees whose age is greater than 23 (age >
23).
scala> dfs.filter(dfs("age") > 23).show()
Output
<console>:22, took 0.078670 s
+----+------+--------+
|age | id | name |
+----+------+--------+
| 25 | 1201 | satish |
| 28 | 1202 | krishna|
| 39 | 1203 | amith |
+----+------+--------+
Use groupBy Method
Use the following command for counting the number of employees who are of the same age.
scala> dfs.groupBy("age").count().show()
Output − two employees are having age 23.
<console>:22, took 5.196091 s
+----+-----+
|age |count|
+----+-----+
| 23 | 2 |
| 25 | 1 |
| 28 | 1 |
| 39 | 1 |
+----+-----+
Running SQL Queries Programmatically
An SQLContext enables applications to run SQL queries programmatically while running
SQL functions and returns the result as a DataFrame.
Generally, in the background, SparkSQL supports two different methods for converting
existing RDDs into DataFrames −

Sr. No Methods & Description

1 Inferring the Schema using Reflection

This method uses reflection to generate the schema of an RDD that contains
specific types of objects.

2 Programmatically Specifying the Schema

The second method for creating DataFrame is through programmatic
interface that allows you to construct a schema and then apply it to an
existing RDD.
 Inferring the Schema using Reflection
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This method uses reflection to generate the schema of an RDD that contains specific types of
objects. The Scala interface for Spark SQL supports automatically converting an RDD
containing case classes to a DataFrame. The case class defines the schema of the table. The
names of the arguments to the case class are read using reflection and they become the names
of the columns.
Case classes can also be nested or contain complex types such as Sequences or Arrays. This
RDD can be implicitly be converted to a DataFrame and then registered as a table. Tables can
be used in subsequent SQL statements.

Example
Let us consider an example of employee records in a text file named employee.txt. Create an
RDD by reading the data from text file and convert it into DataFrame using Default SQL
functions.
Given Data − Take a look into the following data of a file named employee.txt placed it in
the current respective directory where the spark shell point is running.
1201, satish, 25
1202, krishna, 28
1203, amith, 39
1204, javed, 23
1205, prudvi, 23
The following examples explain how to generate a schema using Reflections.

Start the Spark Shell

Start the Spark Shell using following command.
$ spark-shell
Create SQLContext
Generate SQLContext using the following command. Here, sc means SparkContext object.
scala> val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
Import SQL Functions
Use the following command to import all the SQL functions used to implicitly convert an
RDD to a DataFrame.
scala> import sqlContext.implicts._
Create Case Class
Next, we have to define a schema for employee record data using a case class. The following
command is used to declare the case class based on the given data (id, name, age).
scala> case class Employee(id: Int, name: String, age: Int)
defined class Employee
Create RDD and Apply Transformations
Use the following command to generate an RDD named empl by reading the data
from employee.txt and converting it into DataFrame, using the Map functions.
Here, two map functions are defined. One is for splitting the text record into fields
(.map(_.split(“,”))) and the second map function for converting individual fields (id, name,
age) into one case class object (.map(e(0).trim.toInt, e(1), e(2).trim.toInt)).
At last, toDF() method is used for converting the case class object with schema into a
DataFrame.
scala> val empl=sc.textFile("employee.txt")
.map(_.split(","))
.map(e⇒ employee(e(0).trim.toInt,e(1), e(2).trim.toInt))
.toDF()
Output
empl: org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame = [id: int, name: string, age: int]
Store the DataFrame Data in a Table
Use the following command to store the DataFrame data into a table named employee. After
this command, we can apply all types of SQL statements into it.
scala> empl.registerTempTable("employee")
The employee table is ready. Let us now pass some sql queries on the table
using SQLContext.sql() method.

Select Query on DataFrame

Use the following command to select all the records from the employee table. Here, we use
the variable allrecords for capturing all records data. To display those records,
call show() method on it.
scala> val allrecords = sqlContext.sql("SELeCT * FROM employee")
To see the result data of allrecords DataFrame, use the following command.
scala> allrecords.show()
Output
+------+---------+----+
| id | name |age |
+------+---------+----+
| 1201 | satish | 25 |
| 1202 | krishna | 28 |
| 1203 | amith | 39 |
| 1204 | javed | 23 |
| 1205 | prudvi | 23 |
+------+---------+----+
Where Clause SQL Query on DataFrame
Use the following command for applying where statement in a table. Here, the
variable agefilter stores the records of employees whose age are between 20 and 35.
scala> val agefilter = sqlContext.sql("SELeCT * FROM employee WHERE ageC>=20 AND age
<= 35")
To see the result data of agefilter DataFrame, use the following command.
scala> agefilter.show()
Output
<console>:25, took 0.112757 s
+------+---------+----+
| id | name |age |
+------+---------+----+
| 1201 | satish | 25 |
| 1202 | krishna | 28 |
| 1204 | javed | 23 |
| 1205 | prudvi | 23 |
+------+---------+----+
The previous two queries were passed against the whole table DataFrame. Now let us try to
fetch data from the result DataFrame by applying Transformations on it.

Fetch ID values from agefilter DataFrame using column

index
The following statement is used for fetching the ID values from agefilter RDD result, using
field index.
scala> agefilter.map(t=>"ID: "+t(0)).collect().foreach(println)
Output
<console>:25, took 0.093844 s
ID: 1201
ID: 1202
ID: 1204
ID: 1205
This reflection based approach leads to more concise code and works well when you already
know the schema while writing your Spark application.
 Programmatically Specifying the Schema
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The second method for creating DataFrame is through programmatic interface that allows
you to construct a schema and then apply it to an existing RDD. We can create a DataFrame
programmatically using the following three steps.
 Create an RDD of Rows from an Original RDD.
 Create the schema represented by a StructType matching the structure of Rows
in the RDD created in Step 1.
 Apply the schema to the RDD of Rows via createDataFrame method provided
by SQLContext.
Example
Let us consider an example of employee records in a text file named employee.txt. Create a
Schema using DataFrame directly by reading the data from text file.
Given Data − Look at the following data of a file named employee.txt placed in the current
respective directory where the spark shell point is running.
1201, satish, 25
1202, krishna, 28
1203, amith, 39
1204, javed, 23
1205, prudvi, 23
Follow the steps given below to generate a schema programmatically.

Open Spark Shell

Start the Spark shell using following example.
$ spark-shell
Create SQLContext Object
Generate SQLContext using the following command. Here, sc means SparkContext object.
scala> val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
Read Input from Text File
Create an RDD DataFrame by reading a data from the text file named employee.txt using the
following command.
scala> val employee = sc.textFile("employee.txt")
Create an Encoded Schema in a String Format
Use the following command for creating an encoded schema in a string format. That means,
assume the field structure of a table and pass the field names using some delimiter.
scala> val schemaString = "id name age"
Output
schemaString: String = id name age
Import Respective APIs
Use the following command to import Row capabilities and SQL DataTypes.
scala> import org.apache.spark.sql.Row;
scala> import org.apache.spark.sql.types.{StructType, StructField, StringType};
Generate Schema
The following command is used to generate a schema by reading the schemaString variable.
It means you need to read each field by splitting the whole string with space as a delimiter
and take each field type is String type, by default.
scala> val schema = StructType(schemaString.split(" ").map(fieldName ⇒
StructField(fieldName, StringType, true)))
Apply Transformation for Reading Data from Text File
Use the following command to convert an RDD (employee) to Rows. It means, here we are
specifying the logic for reading the RDD data and store it into rowRDD. Here we are using
two map functions: one is a delimiter for splitting the record string (.map(_.split(","))) and
the second map function for defining a Row with the field index value (.map(e ⇒
Row(e(0).trim.toInt, e(1), e(2).trim.toInt))).
scala> val rowRDD = employee.map(_.split(",")).map(e ⇒ Row(e(0).trim.toInt, e(1),
e(2).trim.toInt))
Apply RowRDD in Row Data based on Schema
Use the following statement for creating a DataFrame using rowRDD data
and schema (SCHEMA) variable.
scala> val employeeDF = sqlContext.createDataFrame(rowRDD, schema)
Output
employeeDF: org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame = [id: string, name: string, age: string]
Store DataFrame Data into Table
Use the following command to store the DataFrame into a table named employee.
scala> employeeDF.registerTempTable("employee")
The employee table is now ready. Let us pass some SQL queries into the table using the
method SQLContext.sql().

Select Query on DataFrame

Use the following statement for selecting all records from the employee table. Here we use
the variable allrecords for capturing all records data. To display those records,
call show() method on it.
scala> val allrecords = sqlContext.sql("SELECT * FROM employee")
To see the result data of allrecords DataFrame, use the following command.
scala> allrecords.show()
Output
+------+--------+----+
| id | name |age |
+------+--------+----+
| 1201 | satish | 25 |
| 1202 | krishna| 28 |
| 1203 | amith | 39 |
| 1204 | javed | 23 |
| 1205 | prudvi | 23 |
+------+--------+----+
The method sqlContext.sql allows you to construct DataFrames when the columns and their
types are not known until runtime. Now you can run different SQL queries into it.
 Spark SQL - Data Sources
A DataFrame interface allows different DataSources to work on Spark SQL. It is a temporary
table and can be operated as a normal RDD. Registering a DataFrame as a table allows you to
run SQL queries over its data.
In this chapter, we will describe the general methods for loading and saving data using
different Spark DataSources. Thereafter, we will discuss in detail the specific options that are
available for the built-in data sources.
There are different types of data sources available in SparkSQL, some of which are listed
below −

Sr. Data Sources

No

1 JSON Datasets
Spark SQL can automatically capture the schema of a JSON dataset and load
it as a DataFrame.

2 Hive Tables
Hive comes bundled with the Spark library as HiveContext, which inherits
from SQLContext.

3 Parquet Files
Parquet is a columnar format, supported by many data processing systems.

Spark SQL - JSON Datasets

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Spark SQL can automatically capture the schema of a JSON dataset and load it as a
DataFrame. This conversion can be done using SQLContext.read.json() on either an RDD
of String or a JSON file.
Spark SQL provides an option for querying JSON data along with auto-capturing of JSON
schemas for both reading and writing data. Spark SQL understands the nested fields in JSON
data and allows users to directly access these fields without any explicit transformations.

Example
Let us consider an example of employee records in a text file named employee.json. Use the
following commands to create a DataFrame (df).
Read a JSON document named employee.json with the following content and generate a
table based on the schema in the JSON document.
employee.json − Place this file into the directory where the current scala> pointer is located.
{
{"id" : "1201", "name" : "satish", "age" : "25"}
{"id" : "1202", "name" : "krishna", "age" : "28"}
{"id" : "1203", "name" : "amith", "age" : "39"}
{"id" : "1204", "name" : "javed", "age" : "23"}
{"id" : "1205", "name" : "prudvi", "age" : "23"}
}
Let us perform some Data Frame operations on given data.

DataFrame Operations
DataFrame provides a domain-specific language for structured data manipulation. Here we
include some basic examples of structured data processing using DataFrames.
Follow the steps given below to perform DataFrame operations −

Read JSON Document

First of all, we have to read the JSON document. Based on that, generate a DataFrame
named dfs.
Use the following command to read the JSON document named employee.json containing
the fields − id, name, and age. It creates a DataFrame named dfs.
scala> val dfs = sqlContext.read.json("employee.json")
Output − The field names are automatically taken from employee.json.
dfs: org.apache.spark.sql.DataFrame = [age: string, id: string, name: string]
Use printSchema Method
If you want to see the Structure (Schema) of the DataFrame, then use the following
command.
scala> dfs.printSchema()
Output
root
|-- age: string (nullable = true)
|-- id: string (nullable = true)
|-- name: string (nullable = true)
Show the data
If you want to show the data in the DataFrame, then use the following command.
scala> dfs.show()
Output − You can see the employee data in a tabular format.
<console>:22, took 0.052610 s
+----+------+--------+
|age | id | name |
+----+------+--------+
| 25 | 1201 | satish |
| 28 | 1202 | krishna|
| 39 | 1203 | amith |
| 23 | 1204 | javed |
| 23 | 1205 | prudvi |
+----+------+--------+
Then we can run different SQL statements in it. Users can migrate data into JSON format
with minimal effort, regardless of the origin of the data source
 Spark SQL - Hive Tables
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Hive comes bundled with the Spark library as HiveContext, which inherits
from SQLContext. Using HiveContext, you can create and find tables in the HiveMetaStore
and write queries on it using HiveQL. Users who do not have an existing Hive deployment
can still create a HiveContext. When not configured by the hive-site.xml, the context
automatically creates a metastore called metastore_db and a folder called warehouse in the
current directory.
Consider the following example of employee record using Hive tables. All the recorded data
is in the text file named employee.txt. Here, we will first initialize the HiveContext object.
Using that, we will create a table, load the employee record data into it using HiveQL
language, and apply some queries on it.
employee.txt − Place it in the current directory where the spark-shell is running.
1201, satish, 25
1202, krishna, 28
1203, amith, 39
1204, javed, 23
1205, prudvi, 23
Start the Spark Shell
First, we have to start the Spark Shell. Working with HiveTables means we are working on
Hive MetaStore. Hence, the system will automatically create a warehouse for storing table
data. Therefore, it is better to run Spark Shell on super user. Consider the following
command.
$ su
password:
#spark-shell
scala>
Create SQLContext Object
Use the following command for initializing the HiveContext into the Spark Shell
scala> val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.hive.HiveContext(sc)
Create Table using HiveQL
Use the following command for creating a table named employee with the fields id, name,
and age. Here, we are using the Create statement of HiveQL syntax.
scala> sqlContext.sql("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS employee(id INT, name STRING,
age INT) ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' LINES TERMINATED
BY '\n'")
Load Data into Table using HiveQL
Use the following command for loading the employee record data into the employee table. If
it is executed successfully, the given employee records are stored into the employee table as
per the schema.
scala> sqlContext.sql("LOAD DATA LOCAL INPATH 'employee.txt' INTO TABLE
employee")
Select Fields from the Table
We can execute any kind of SQL queries into the table. Use the following command for
fetching all records using HiveQL select query.
scala> val result = sqlContext.sql("FROM employee SELECT id, name, age")
To display the record data, call the show() method on the result DataFrame.
scala> result.show()
Output
<console>:26, took 0.157137 s
+------+---------+----+
| id | name |age |
+------+---------+----+
| 1201 | Satish | 25 |
| 1202 | Krishna | 28 |
| 1203 | amith | 39 |
| 1204 | javed | 23 |
| 1205 | prudvi | 23 |
+------+---------+----+
 Spark SQL - Parquet Files
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Parquet is a columnar format, supported by many data processing systems. The advantages of
having a columnar storage are as follows −
 Columnar storage limits IO operations.
 Columnar storage can fetch specific columns that you need to access.
 Columnar storage consumes less space.
 Columnar storage gives better-summarized data and follows type-specific
encoding.
Spark SQL provides support for both reading and writing parquet files that automatically
capture the schema of the original data. Like JSON datasets, parquet files follow the same
procedure.
Let’s take another look at the same example of employee record data
named employee.parquet placed in the same directory where spark-shell is running.
Given data − Do not bother about converting the input data of employee records into parquet
format. We use the following commands that convert the RDD data into Parquet file. Place
the employee.json document, which we have used as the input file in our previous examples.
$ spark-shell
Scala> val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
Scala> val employee = sqlContext.read.json(“emplaoyee”)
Scala> employee.write.parquet(“employee.parquet”)
It is not possible to show you the parquet file. It is a directory structure, which you can find in
the current directory. If you want to see the directory and file structure, use the following
command.
$ cd employee.parquet/

$ ls
_common_metadata
Part-r-00001.gz.parquet
_metadata
_SUCCESS
The following commands are used for reading, registering into table, and applying some
queries on it.

Open Spark Shell

Start the Spark shell using following example
$ spark-shell
Create SQLContext Object
Generate SQLContext using the following command. Here, sc means SparkContext object.
scala> val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
Read Input from Text File
Create an RDD DataFrame by reading a data from the parquet file
named employee.parquet using the following statement.
scala> val parqfile = sqlContext.read.parquet(“employee.parquet”)
Store the DataFrame into the Table
Use the following command for storing the DataFrame data into a table named employee.
After this command, we can apply all types of SQL statements into it.
scala> Parqfile.registerTempTable(“employee”)
The employee table is ready. Let us now pass some SQL queries on the table using the
method SQLContext.sql().

Select Query on DataFrame

Use the following command for selecting all records from the employee table. Here, we use
the variable allrecords for capturing all records data. To display those records,
call show() method on it.
scala> val allrecords = sqlContext.sql("SELeCT * FROM employee")
To see the result data of allrecords DataFrame, use the following command.
scala> allrecords.show()
Output
+------+--------+----+
| id | name |age |
+------+--------+----+
| 1201 | satish | 25 |
| 1202 | krishna| 28 |
| 1203 | amith | 39 |
| 1204 | javed | 23 |
| 1205 | prudvi | 23 |
+------+--------+----+