On which technology is Photon built?

Photon is built on Apache Spark technology, which focuses on optimizing data processing for high performance and efficiency. By leveraging Spark’s in-memory computation capabilities and sophisticated optimization techniques, Photon can significantly accelerate query execution, particularly for data-intensive operations.

In the context of Databricks, Photon is designed to enhance the performance of SQL execution and supports various workloads in a unified analytics engine. This technology provides users with rapid response times and the ability to handle large datasets with improved resource utilization.

Other options like Hadoop, AWS Glue, and Apache Flink are distinct technologies serving different purposes. For instance, Hadoop primarily focuses on distributed storage and batch processing while AWS Glue is a fully managed ETL service optimized for data integration. Apache Flink, on the other hand, is geared more towards stream processing. These alternatives do not utilize the same foundational architecture and optimizations for in-memory computation that are intrinsic to Apache Spark and, subsequently, Photon.