for hardware or system problems on
any server. It can deliver data — and
run large-scale, high-performance
processing jobs — in spite of system
changes or failures.
Building on Hadoop
Although Hadoop provides a platform for data storage and parallel
processing, the real value comes
from add-ons, cross-integration
the lifeblood of the company, according to Feinsmith.
For the moment at least, relational database technologies appear
to be more suited for running transaction applications, he said.
hugh Williams, vice president of experience, search and plat-
forms at eBay, said the auction site is revamping its core search
engine technology using hadoop and hbase, a technology that
enables real-time analysis of data in hadoop environments.
the new search engine, code-named Cassini, will replace the
Voyager technology that eBay has used since the early 2000s. the
update is needed in part to handle surging volumes of data that
need to be managed.
EBay currently has more than 97 million active buyers and sellers
and over 200 million items for sale across 50,000 categories. the
auction site handles close to 2 billion page views, 250 million search
queries and tens of billions of database calls each day, according
to Williams.
the company has 9 petabytes of data stored on hadoop and tera-
data clusters, and the amount of data is growing quickly, he said.
hadoop and hbase allow eBay to build a far more sophisticated
search engine than Voyager, said Williams, noting that Cassini
will deliver more accurate and more context-based results to user
search queries.
JaikuMar ViJayaN covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security
and e-voting for Computerworld.
