Spark SQL is a module for structured data processing in Spark. It provides DataFrames and the ability to execute SQL queries. Some key points:
- Spark SQL allows querying structured data using SQL, or via DataFrame/Dataset APIs for Scala, Java, Python, and R.
- It supports various data sources like Hive, Parquet, JSON, and more. Data can be loaded and queried using a unified interface.
- The SparkSession API combines SparkContext with SQL functionality and is used to create DataFrames from data sources, register databases/tables, and execute SQL queries.