Hadoop is an open source project from Apache that has evolved rapidly into a major technology movement. It has emerged as the best way to handle massive amounts of data, including not only structured data but also complex, unstructured data as well.
Its popularity is due in part to its ability to store, analyze, and access large amounts of data quickly and cost effectively across clusters of commodity hardware. Hadoop is not actually a single product but instead a collection of several components.
The following sections provide additional information on the individual components:
