Real-Time Analytics With Storm - Lesson 2

I just finished the second lesson of Real-Time Analytics with Apache Storm. At this stage I should be able to understand how Sprouts and Bolts interact, and to parse data from Twitter in real time.

It was an interesting lesson. I like a lot the fact that you have videos explaining what to do, then a text document describing steps, followed by a video with the solution. It makes it easy to go through the course, and if you are tight on time you can skip the first video (and go back to it if you get stuck).

I found the use of Twitter data very interesting, seeing all that data coming to you in real time… wow. The only downside is that the server (run in your localhost) to visualise the results was dying under the pressure. The fans of my MacBook Pro were spinning like crazy, but the server couldn’t handle the sheer amount of data. Oh, well, lesson learned!

To be honest I have the feeling my solutions for exercise 6 and 7 may not be correct, but due to the visualisation problem mentioned above I can’t verify if that’s the case. I’m not too worried, though, as the aim of this lesson is to understand the concepts behind connecting Sprouts and Bolts, which I did.

You can find my solutions to this lesson in Github.