I, too, think there is not one best paradigm for everything.  However, it 
seems to me that Pregel-for-key-value-data, if I may call it that, 
dominates map-reduce except for applications where you really need the 
sorting built into map-reduce (and if you think about it, many things for 
which map-reduce is being used do not really need that sorting).  Aside 
from that sorting, map-reduce is just a subset of what you can do with 
Pregel-for-key-value-data.  And sorting could be added to the richer 
programming model, so it would be a strict dominance situation --- for 
this particular pair of paradigms.  Wouldn't you agree?

The maintenance problem I cited is one that looks like it would really 
demonstrate some of the value of the richer programming model.  I would 
like to try an actual comparison.  To be fair, the map-reduce based 
solution should not be stupid.  So that's why I am asking how this 
maintenance problem can best be solved using map-reduce.

Thanks,
Mike



From:   Sean Owen <[email protected]>
To:     [email protected]
Date:   04/20/2012 01:57 PM
Subject:        Re: shortest-path maintenance



Having seen both these paradigms "from the inside" I can make two
vague general comments. There is not going to be one best paradigm for
distributed computing. Some paradigms are better for some problems.

That said, MapReduce has always been really for one type of problem:
analytics / log processing. It's great for anything shaped like that.
It's amazing how it's been abused to do more. But it's weird for a
general paradigm. Hence I generally find these newer paradigms that
are emerging better, since at least they're more purpose-built for
general purposes.

Hadoop's what we've got easy access to in 2012. I think that will
start to change in 2013.

Sean



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