About the Reviewers

Sourav Gulati is an MCA and has been working in the IT industry for about 5 years. He has worked on technologies such as Java and Unix shell scripting and has also worked on big data technologies such as Hadoop, Cassandra, Storm, and so on. Initially, he started working for Tech Mahindra in 2010 and then moved to Impetus in 2012. Currently, he is working as a senior software engineer at Impetus.

I would really like to thank Shilpi Saxena and Packt Publishing for giving me the chance to be a part of this book. This book is packed with practical knowledge and experience. I would also like to wish Shilpi a lot of success with this book.

Saurabh Gupta is the lead software engineer at Impetus Technologies and has around 8 years of experience in IT. He started his career with Java/J2EE and headed toward NoSQL and big data technologies. He loves to read about new technologies or tools on the market. He believes that there are no secrets to success, but rather that it is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

I want to thank my wife, Nalini, and the rest of my family, who supported and encouraged me in spite of all the time it kept me away from them.

Ranjeet Kumar Jha has over 12 years of experience in various phases of project life cycles, including the development and design phases, and has also been part of production support for Java/J2EE and big data-based applications. He has more than 6 years of experience as a technical architect in Java technologies and more than 3 years in big data stacks. He has worked in various domains such as finance, insurance, e-commerce, digital media, and online advertisements.

Ranjeet has worked as a programmer, designer, and mentor and now works as an architect in all types of projects related to Java, especially J2EE and big data.

His LinkedIn profile is available at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jharanjeet.

His certifications include:

• OCM-JEA 5 (Oracle Certified Master, Java Enterprise Architect) with a 94 percent score in 2011

• OCE-WSD (Oracle Certified Expert, JAVA EE 6 Web Services Developer) in 2013

• SCJP (Sun Certified Java Programmer) in 2004

• SCWCD (Sun Certified Web Component Developer) in 2004

• Java Development with Apache Cassandra from DataStax in 2014

• MongoDB for Java Developers from MongoDB University in 2014

The companies he has worked for include the following:

• EtechAces Consulting and Marketing Pvt Ltd. Gurgaon (Delhi NCR)

• Times Internet Ltd (TimesGroup), Noida (Delhi NCR)

• Ebusinessware Inc (now Xoriant Corporation), Gurgaon (Delhi NCR)

• WIPRO, Gurgaon (Delhi NCR)

• AgreeYa Solution Pvt Ltd, Noida (Delhi NCR)

• INCA Informatics, Noida (Delhi NCR)

I would like to thank my family—my wife, Anila Jha, and two kids, Anushka Jha and Tanisha Jha, for their constant support, encouragement, and patience. Without you, I wouldn't have achieved so much! Love you all immensely.

Mark Kerzner holds degrees in law, math, and computer science. He is a software architect who has been working on Hadoop-based systems since 2008. Mark is a cofounder of Elephant Scale, a big data training and consulting company. He is a coauthor of the open source books Hadoop Illuminated and Hbase Design Patterns, both by Packt Publishing. He has also authored and coauthored other books and patents, which can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

I would like to acknowledge the help of my colleagues, in particular, Sujee Maniyam, and last but not least, my multitalented family.

Sonal Raj is a hacker, Pythonista, big data believer, and a technology dreamer. He has a passion for design and is an artist at heart. He blogs about technology, design, and gadgets at http://www.sonalraj.com/. When not working on projects, he can be found traveling, stargazing, or reading.

He has pursued engineering in computer science and loves to work on community projects. He has been a research fellow at SERC, IISc, Bangalore, and has taken up projects on graph computations using Neo4j and Storm. Sonal has been a speaker at PyCon India and local meets on Neo4j and has also published articles and research papers in leading magazines and international journals. He has contributed to several open source projects.

Sonal has been actively involved in the development of machine learning frameworks and has worked on technologies such as NoSQL databases including MongoDB and streaming using Apache Spark. He is currently working at Goldman Sachs.

I am grateful to the author for patiently listening to my critiques and I'd like to thank the open source community for keeping their passion alive and contributing to such remarkable projects. A special thank you to my parents, without whom I would never have grown to love learning as much as I do.