AIMS 4755 Introduction to Big Data

4 semester hours

Ability to process and draw valuable business insights from big data has become central to competitiveness and survival for many industries. However, older and current technologies are not effective in handling big data, and the challenges have pushed the industry to invent fundamentally new ways of capturing, storing, retrieving, processing, and analyzing data. This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts of big data, their sources, and how analytics on big data are designed and implemented. With that foundation, this course will expose students to big data and related new generation platforms and technologies. Students will gain insights into the challenges and techniques of analyzing unstructured data that are generated through various social media and other interactive platforms. Students will also learn the fundamentals of non-relational NoSQL databases, distributed file system, and massively parallel processing used extensively in big data processing. The course will also students to acquire introductory-level proficiencies in hands-on skills involving some big data platforms and tools such as Hadoop, Spark, HBase, etc., or other similar platforms. After completing this course, students will be able to analyze the big data needs and challenges of an organization and recommend choice of tools, technologies, architecture, and implementation strategies needed to capture, process, and turn “Big Data” into actionable business insight.

Prerequisites: ACCT 3140 or BCOR 2710 ; and AIMS 3730 or CMSI 185 , all with a grade of C (2.0) or higher; or consent of instructor and approval of Associate Dean.