Scribd
Upload
21 views

Spark Interview Questions

Uploaded by

Samir Nandardhane
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
21 views

Spark Interview Questions

Uploaded by

Samir Nandardhane
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

IBM Databricks/Pyspark interview questions 2024.

➤ How do you deploy PySpark applications in a production environment?


➤ What are some best practices for monitoring and logging PySpark jobs?
➤ How do you manage resources and scheduling in a PySpark application?
➤ Write a PySpark job to perform a specific data processing task (e.g., filtering data,
aggregating results).
➤ You have a dataset containing user activity logs with missing values and inconsistent
data types. Describe how you would clean and standardize this dataset using PySpark.
➤ Given a dataset with nested JSON structures, how would you flatten it into a tabular
format using PySpark?
➤ Your PySpark job is running slower than expected due to data skew. Explain how you
would identify and address this issue.
➤ You need to join two large datasets, but the join operation is causing out-of-memory
errors. What strategies would you use to optimize this join?
➤ Describe how you would set up a real-time data pipeline using PySpark and Kafka to
process streaming data.
➤ You are tasked with processing real-time sensor data to detect anomalies. Explain the
steps you would take to implement this using PySpark.
➤ Describe how you would design and implement an ETL pipeline in PySpark to extract
data from an RDBMS, transform it, and load it into a data warehouse.
➤ Given a requirement to process and transform data from multiple sources (e.g., CSV,
JSON, and Parquet files), how would you handle this in a PySpark job?
➤ You need to integrate data from an external API into your PySpark pipeline. Explain
how you would achieve this.
➤ Describe how you would use PySpark to join data from a Hive table and a Kafka
stream.
➤ You need to integrate data from an external API into your PySpark pipeline. Explain
how you would achieve this.

Apache Spark Scenario based Question- Answers in Data Engineering

Q1. Data Processing Optimization: How would you optimize a Spark job that processes 1
TB of data daily to reduce execution time and cost ??
A1. Consider the following strategies to reduce execution time and cost:

⚡ Data Partitioning ⚡
- Optimize Data Distribution: Ensure that data is evenly distributed across partitions to
prevent data skew and avoid some tasks taking longer than others.
- Increase the Number of Partitions: By increasing the number of partitions, you can
achieve finer-grained parallelism and better resource utilization.

⚡ Resource Allocation ⚡
- Dynamic Allocation: Use Spark's dynamic allocation to automatically adjust the
number of executors based on the workload, which helps in optimizing resource usage.
- Tuning Executor Parameters: Configure executor memory and cores to match the
workload requirements. For instance, `spark.executor.memory`, `spark.executor.cores`,
and `spark.executor.instances`.

⚡ Caching and Persistence ⚡


- Cache Intermediate Results: Use `cache()` or `persist()` to store intermediate results
that are reused multiple times in the job. This reduces recomputation and speeds up the
overall job.
- Persist with Appropriate Storage Levels: Choose the correct storage level (e.g.,
MEMORY_ONLY, MEMORY_AND_DISK) based on the size and access patterns of the data.

⚡ Data Storage Format ⚡


- Use Efficient File Formats: Opt for columnar file formats like Parquet or ORC, which are
highly efficient for read-heavy workloads. These formats support column pruning and
predicate pushdown, reducing the amount of data read from disk.
- Compression: Apply appropriate compression algorithms (e.g., Snappy, Zlib) to reduce
the data size and improve I/O performance.

⚡ Broadcast Variables ⚡
- Broadcast Small Datasets: Use the `broadcast` function to distribute small datasets
across all nodes, reducing the need for shuffling data during join operations.

⚡ Avoid Wide Transformations ⚡


- Minimize Shuffles: Shuffling data across the network is expensive. Minimize wide
transformations such as `groupByKey` and `reduceByKey` by using alternatives like
`reduceByKey` or `aggregateByKey`, which perform better by reducing data locally
before shuffling.
- Optimize Joins: Use broadcast joins for small tables and consider using partitioned joins
for larger tables to avoid expensive shuffles.

⚡ Optimize Spark Configurations ⚡


- Adjust Parallelism: Set `spark.default.parallelism` and `spark.sql.shuffle.partitions` to
appropriate values based on the cluster size and job requirements.
⚡ Monitoring and Debugging ⚡
- Use Spark UI: Monitor jobs using the Spark UI to identify bottlenecks and optimize
stages that are taking longer.

By applying these strategies, you can significantly reduce the execution time and
improve the performance.

𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐃𝐀𝐓𝐀 𝐄𝐍𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐄𝐑𝐒


Preparing for an interview for a data engineer role that involves Apache Spark can be
crucial for securing the job.

🔴 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐬:-
1- What is Apache Spark, and how does it differ from Hadoop MapReduce?
2- Explain the concept of RDD (Resilient Distributed Dataset) in Spark.
3- How can you create an RDD in Spark? Describe at least two methods.
4- What is the difference between a transformation and an action in Spark?
5- What is Spark's lazy evaluation, and why is it beneficial?

🔴 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧:-


1- Explain the concept of a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) in Spark and its role in job
execution.
2- What is a Spark executor, and what are its responsibilities?
3- How does the Spark Driver communicate with Spark Executors?
4- What is a SparkContext, and how is it used in a Spark application?
5- What is a SparkSession, and how is it different from SparkContext?

🔴 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬:-


1- How does Spark handle memory management? Describe the division between
execution and storage memory.
2- What are broadcast variables and accumulators in Spark? How are they used?
3- How does Spark ensure fault tolerance? Describe the role of lineage and
checkpointing.
4- Explain the difference between narrow and wide transformations. Provide examples.
5- What is the difference between map and flatMap in Spark?

🔴 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐒𝐐𝐋 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬:-


1- What is Spark SQL, and how does it integrate with the Spark ecosystem?
2- What is a DataFrame in Spark, and how does it differ from an RDD?
3- How do you create a DataFrame in Spark from a JSON file?
4- What is the Catalyst optimizer, and how does it improve the performance of Spark
SQL?
5- Explain the concept of a DataFrame API and its benefits over RDDs.

🔴 𝐀𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐬:-
1 - What is Apache Spark Streaming, and how does it handle real-time data processing?
2- What is the difference between Spark Streaming and Structured Streaming?
3- How do you handle schema evolution in Spark?
4- What is a partition in Spark, and why is it important?
5- How can you optimize Spark jobs for better performance?

1. Given a dataset with nested JSON structures, how would you flatten it into a tabular
format using PySpark?
2. Your PySpark job is running slower than expected due to data skew. Explain how you
would identify and address this issue.
3. You need to join two large datasets, but the join operation is causing out-of-memory
errors. What strategies would you use to optimize this join?
4. Describe how you would set up a real-time data pipeline using PySpark and Kafka to
process streaming data.
5. You are tasked with processing real-time sensor data to detect anomalies. Explain the
steps you would take to implement this using PySpark.
6. Describe how you would design and implement an ETL pipeline in PySpark to extract
data from an RDBMS, transform it, and load it into a data warehouse.

You might also like