The importance of big data technology
The adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, Internet of Things, etc. by individuals and organization has led to an explosion of data. As it stands, existing Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSs) are incapable of handling this deluge of data. The term Big Data was coined to represent these vast, fast and complex datasets that regular RDBMSs could not handle. Special tools or frameworks were developed to deal with processing, managing and storing this big data. These tools are capable of functioning in distributed industry- standard environments thereby maintaining efficiency and effectiveness at a business level. Apache Hadoop is an example of such a framework. This report discusses big data, it origins, opportunities and challenges that it presents, big data analytics and the application of big data using existing big data tools or frameworks. It also discusses Apache Hadoop as a big data framework and provides a basic overview of this technology from technological and business perspectives.