Parallel Processing Systems for Big Data: A Survey

The volume, variety, and velocity properties of big data and the valuable information it contains have motivated the investigation of many new parallel data processing systems in addition to the approaches using traditional database management systems (DBMSs). MapReduce pioneered this paradigm change and rapidly became the primary big data processing system for its simplicity, scalability, and fine-grain fault tolerance. However, compared with DBMSs, MapReduce also arouses controversy in processing efficiency, low-level abstraction, and rigid dataflow. Inspired by MapReduce, nowadays the big data systems are blooming. Some of them follow MapReduce’s idea, but with more flexible models for general-purpose usage. Some absorb the advantages of DBMSs with higher abstraction. There are also specific systems for certain applications, such as machine learning and stream data processing. To explore new research opportunities and assist users in selecting suitable processing systems for specific applications, this survey paper will give a high-level overview of the existing parallel data processing systems categorized by the data input as batch processing, stream processing, graph processing, and machine learning processing and introduce representative projects in each category. As the pioneer, the original MapReduce system, as well as its active variants and extensions on dataflow, data access, parameter tuning, communication, and energy optimizations will be discussed at first. System benchmarks and open issues for big data processing will also be studied in this survey.