Big Data Glossary

1. Apache Hadoop (http://hadoop.apache.org ) - an open source distributed computing platform which includes the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and an implementation of MapReduce.
2. Apache HBase (http://hbase.apache.org ) - open source distributed storage for big data (e.g. over a billion rows and a million columns) on clusters of commodity hardware.
3. Apache Hive (http://hive.apache.org) - a data warehouse solution that provides ETL and access to files and query execution.
4. Cassandra (http://cassandra.apache.org) - a distributed database developed at Facebook (www.facebook.com) owned by DataSax (www.stax.com), now integrated with Hadoop to provide an analytic platform for big data.
5. Cloudera (www.cloudera.com) - a participant in Hadoop with a commercial distribution bundle that includes the source code and other features in one package.
6. Greenplum (www.greenplum.com) - a division of EMC (www.emc.com) that provides an analytic platform, a data computing appliance, a database and other products for big data analysis.
7. Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS, http://hadoop.apache.org/hdfs) - the file system used by Hadoop for distributed data storage.
8. Hortonworks (www.hortonworks.com) - a commercial open source platform based on Hadoop for storing, processing, and analyzing big data.
9. MapReduce (www.mapreduce.org) - technology developed by Google (www.google.com) and used by Hadoop for its parallel processing. It is the core technology behind the big data engines. In the "map" step, input data is distributed to multiple nodes for computation, and in the "reduce" step, the results are collected to produce the answer to the initial question.
10. MongoDB (www.mongodb.org) - a high-performance, open source, NoSQL database written in C++.
11. NoSQL (www.nosql.org) - a group of non-relational, distributed, open source, scalable databases designed for Web-scale use. Over 100 such products are listed on www.nonsql-database.org, including Apache HBase, Cassandra, Amazon SimpleDB, MongoDB.

Agile and CMMI

A very good Software Engineering Institute paper on Agile and CMMI by David Anderson. It's a lengthy read but goes in to good depth and addresses a number of common perception issues in detail @ http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/08tn003.pdf

Identity Theft on Facebook

From EE Time:

"Raise your hand only if someone lifted private information on your own Facebook page, pretended to be you, befriended your friends, family members and business contacts and pried information out of them as if the “real” you were asking the questions."

Exploring Cloud Architecture

From the MSDN Magazine:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh852589.aspx