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Last updated on Mar 11, 2025
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Your data pipelines are struggling with large datasets. How do you tackle the bottlenecks?

How do you address the challenges in your data pipelines? Share your strategies for managing large datasets.

Data Engineering Data Engineering

Data Engineering

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Last updated on Mar 11, 2025
  1. All
  2. Engineering
  3. Data Engineering

Your data pipelines are struggling with large datasets. How do you tackle the bottlenecks?

How do you address the challenges in your data pipelines? Share your strategies for managing large datasets.

Add your perspective
Help others by sharing more (125 characters min.)
9 answers
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    Nebojsha Antic 🌟

    Senior Data Analyst & TL @Valtech | Instructor @SMX Academy 🌐Certified Google Professional Cloud Architect & Data Engineer | Microsoft AI Engineer, Fabric Data & Analytics Engineer, Azure Administrator, Data Scientist

    • Report contribution

    🚀Optimize data partitioning to reduce processing overhead. 🔄Implement parallel processing to handle large data loads efficiently. 📦Use efficient file formats like Parquet or ORC for better compression and speed. ⚡Leverage in-memory computing with Spark to accelerate data transformations. 🔍Monitor pipeline performance with logging and metrics to identify bottlenecks. 📊Apply caching strategies to avoid redundant computations. 🌐Scale horizontally by distributing workloads across multiple nodes. 🔧Optimize SQL queries and indexing for faster database performance.

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    Ricardo Neves Junior, PhD

    AI Engineer | Senior Data Scientist | LLM | RAG | Agents | LangGraph | Machine Learning | NLP | Azure | AWS

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    I optimized a data pipeline processing event logs that initially took hours. Main improvements: Indexing & Query Optimization – Added indexes, reducing query time. Parallel Processing – Migrated to Spark for distributed execution. Efficient Data Formats – Switched from CSV to Parquet for better performance. Streaming Instead of Batch – Used Kafka + Spark Streaming for real-time processing. Resource Optimization – Adjusted memory and CPU allocation. These changes cut processing time from hours to minutes, making the pipeline more efficient and scalable.

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    Sagar Khandelwal

    Manager- Project Management , Business Development | IT Project & Sales Leader | Consultant |Bid Management & RFP Specialist | Procurement Specialist | Solution Strategist

    • Report contribution

    Optimize Queries & Indexing – Ensure efficient database queries and indexing to speed up data retrieval. Parallel Processing – Distribute workloads using parallelization techniques like Apache Spark or Dask. Efficient Storage Formats – Use columnar formats like Parquet/ORC to reduce I/O and improve performance. Scalability & Caching – Scale infrastructure dynamically and implement caching for frequently accessed data. Monitoring & Profiling – Continuously monitor pipeline performance and optimize based on bottleneck analysis.

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    Mithun Kumar

    Senior Data Engineer | Ex-Amazon, BofA | Patent Holder | MSc AI (UK) | Inclusive AI Innovator | SQL • Python • AWS • ETL • Big Data • Scalable Pipelines

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    To tackle bottlenecks in large data pipelines, implement parallel processing and partitioning to distribute workloads efficiently. Use columnar data formats like Parquet or ORC to reduce I/O and improve query performance. Optimize data transformations by minimizing data shuffling and redundant steps. Introduce caching and indexing to accelerate data retrieval. Employ compression techniques to reduce data size and transmission time. Leverage scalable cloud infrastructure with autoscaling to handle peak loads dynamically. Monitor pipeline performance using real-time metrics and automate adjustments to resolve bottlenecks quickly.

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    Harry Waldron, CPCU

    Associate Consultant @ Voyage Advisory

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    Some best practices for huge historical DW and other key DBs include: * Set up PURGE criteria based on legal records retention needs * Archive unnecessary outdated records to another history DB where there will be no future activity * Actually, start with SMALLER but highly diverse TEST DBs to optimize SQL coding before implementing new queries in PROD * If needed invest in more disk space, hardware, cloud services, etc. as needed

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    Arivukkarasan Raja, PhD

    Director of IT → VP IT | Enterprise Architecture | AI Governance | Digital Operating Models | Reduced tech debt, drove platform innovation | Trusted to align IT strategy with C-suite impact | PhD in Robotics & AI

    • Report contribution

    To tackle bottlenecks in data pipelines handling large datasets: 1. **Parallel Processing**: Implement distributed computing to process data concurrently. 2. **Efficient Storage**: Use columnar storage formats like Parquet for faster access. 3. **Data Pruning**: Filter and aggregate data early to reduce volume. 4. **Caching**: Cache frequent queries to speed up retrieval. 5. **Pipeline Monitoring**: Continuously monitor and adjust resources to address bottlenecks promptly.

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    1
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    Naushil Khajanchi

    Data Scientist | Machine Learning Engineer | AI & NLP Enthusiast | SQL | Python | Cloud | Business Analytics

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    Scaling data pipelines efficiently requires identifying and optimizing bottlenecks. Here’s how I handle performance issues: 🔹 Optimize Data Storage & Formats: Switching to Parquet or ORC with proper partitioning and clustering significantly reduces query times and storage costs. 🔹 Leverage Distributed Processing: Using Apache Spark on GCP or AWS EMR ensures parallel execution, reducing computation overhead. 🔹 Implement Incremental Data Loads: Rather than reprocessing entire datasets, delta ingestion and CDC (Change Data Capture) minimize redundancy and improve efficiency. In a real-time stock analytics project, implementing GCP’s BigQuery with optimized partitioning improved query performance by 50%, making data retrieval seamless.

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    Premkishor Jha

    SDE-III |Java | Scala | Spark | HDFS | AWS | Kubernetes |

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    We have to first pinpoint where the system's choking and then think of optimization. We should start with breaking our process in stages like injestion, processing and storage. Now start with monitoring resource utilisation (CPU/Memory), latency, throughput and I/O operation.This will help us identify exactly where the issue is. 1. If problem is with reading large chunk of data at once then we can read data in smaller chunks parallely accross nodes. 2. If processing of data is consuming time then distributed framework like Apache Spark can be used for parallel processing of data. 3.For problems with storage we should check I/O. HDFS/S3 can be used to store data at volume and file format like parquet can be used to compress data volume.

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    Venkatesha Prabhu Rambabu

    Big Data Engineer at Blue cross blue shield of Michigan

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    To tackle bottlenecks in large datasets, I optimize Apache Spark performance using partitioning and bucketing to distribute data efficiently. I enable persist() and cache() for frequently used datasets to reduce recomputation. Using Spark SQL's broadcast joins, I optimize small-to-large table joins. I fine-tune shuffle operations by increasing parallelism and adjusting spark.sql.shuffle.partitions. Switching from text-based formats to Parquet or ORC improves read performance. I leverage Databricks Auto-Optimize and Delta Lake for efficient storage and indexing. These optimizations enhance pipeline speed and scalability.

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