Snappy
Snappy is a fast data compression and decompression library developed by Google, designed for high-speed compression with moderate compression ratios. It is optimized for real-time applications, such as big data processing and network communication, where speed is prioritized over maximum compression. The library is widely used in systems like Google's Bigtable, LevelDB, and Hadoop to reduce storage and bandwidth usage efficiently.
Developers should learn and use Snappy when they need rapid compression and decompression for applications where performance and low latency are critical, such as in-memory databases, real-time analytics, or network protocols. It is particularly useful in distributed systems and data-intensive environments, like Apache Spark or Kafka, where reducing data size quickly can significantly improve throughput and response times without sacrificing too much compression efficiency.