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Acknowledgments
Even before I joined Hortonworks I wanted to write a book on Hive. At the time there weren’t many and the
ones I saw where technically sound but not for the average users and especially not for someone coming
from the relational database world. Once I began working at Hortonworks I figured it would be easy to sit
down and write the book. I had all the best resources at my fingertips and access to some of the brightest
people I’ve ever met. I had Hive committers like Alan Gates who never hesitated to answer an e-mail
or spend a moment to talk to you at a conference. I had the friendship and support of the best Solution
Engineering team in the world. Yetalmost 2 and a half years later, there was still no book.
What I didn’t predict was the incredible pace of this market and the herculean time commitment all of
us on the team endure to provide solutions to our customers. It is truly a labor of love, but between work and
family, the book had to wait. It waited a long time. I think any other publisher would have kicked me out the
door and looked elsewhere, but Apress held steady (although I cannot honestly say they didn’t push back a
little and deservedly so) and trusted that someday we would have a book.
The struggle with writing a book on Hive is if you wait six months between writing then you’re writing
a new book. I came to terms that this was not the job of one person and I needed help. Ankur was one of the
first to step up. If not for Ankur’s perseverance and commitment, this book would not be in your hands right
now. It was also Ankur who put us in touch with Andre and, I’m certain Ankur would agree, without Andre’s
incredible writing output and knowledge, you would also not have a book in your hands or, at the very
least, it would be smaller and you would be much less informed. Finally, thank you to David, who has truly
provided the technical exclamation point on the book and was vital to rounding out the edges and moving
us forward.
There are countless other people who have helped in any way they could with little time they had.
Cindy Gross from the Microsoft CAT team was an early participant and helped to keep the project moving
forward. Thank you to Ancil for stepping up and helping with much needed technical reviews—especially
on my chapters. But most especially thank you to Hortonworks for not only supporting the book but being
downright excited about it. The greater Hortonworks team wasn’t excited about the book just because it is
a Hive book; they were excited for us, the team of authors, for our accomplishment. I never was forced to
choose between my work and the book; it was my choice to focus on work.
Finally, thank you to my family. My kids may never have a need for Hive but I know they think it’s pretty
cool that dad help write a book. It’s been a long journey from the days I was an English major to now being
a Solutions Engineer for an open source Big Data company writing technical books, but I really do still look
around me and count my blessings. I’ll say it again I work with some of the brightest people in the industry
and although I can’t hold a candle to their intelligence, I do know their collective knowledge and insight
makes me a better person.
—Scott Shaw