Integration on Ryan Orban

An Easy Way to Bridge Between Python and Vowpal Wabbit

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

This post shows how to use Python as a driver for Vowpal Wabbit by calling it as a subprocess and piping data through stdin/stdout. In 2014, there was no stable native Python binding for VW — the standard approach was to call the VW binary from Python using subprocess, format your data as VW’s input format, and parse the output predictions back into Python objects.

The Big Challenge of Big Data and Hadoop Integration

me@ryanorban.com (Ryan Orban) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

While much of the 2013 big data discourse focused on what Hadoop could do, this Cloud Computing Journal piece addressed a harder problem: how do you integrate Hadoop into an existing enterprise data environment? Most enterprises adopting Hadoop weren’t replacing their RDBMS systems — they were adding Hadoop alongside Oracle, SQL Server, and existing data warehouse infrastructure.