Apache Parquet
Apache Parquet is an open-source columnar storage file format optimized for use with big data processing frameworks. It is designed for efficient data compression and encoding schemes, enabling high-performance analytical queries on large datasets. Parquet is widely used in data lakes and data warehouses due to its compatibility with tools like Apache Spark, Apache Hive, and Apache Impala.
Developers should learn Apache Parquet when working with big data analytics, as it significantly reduces storage costs and improves query performance by storing data in a columnar format, which is ideal for read-heavy workloads. It is particularly useful in data engineering pipelines for ETL processes, data lake architectures, and scenarios requiring interoperability across multiple data processing frameworks, such as in cloud environments like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.