Thanks Chris and Hitesh for you answers. I will make the best of this that I can.
On a different note, if we find that the learning curve into Hadoop development is too steep, are there expert consultants in internals that you would recommend? I am thinking it would be a matter of "advising and consulting" rather than "programming". Someone to help set up dev environment, ask specific questions, help with design. The mailing lists are great but I can't expect to get hand-holding for free. john
