Big Data Course Syllabus: Concepts, Duration & Features

Do you want to become a Big Data professional but wonder what you’ll be studying in a Big Data course? If you answered yes, then this is the perfect article for you. 

This article will cover upGrad’s Big Data course syllabus as you’ll learn about the various tools, concepts, and technologies we teach about in our Big Data course. Let’s begin: 

upGrad’s Big Data Course Syllabus

If you are interested to know more about Big Data, check out our Advanced Certificate Programme in Big Data from IIIT Bangalore.

Following is our big data course syllabus:

Basics of Programming

Our PG Diploma in Software Development Specialisation in Big Data program starts with the fundamentals of programming and basic data structures. You will study the fundamentals of Java, one of the most popular programming languages available and its basic building blocks. 

The course will first familiarize you with Java and its capabilities by teaching you how to write various Java programs. You will also learn about Object-Oriented Programming where you create objects that contain data and methods. The course will teach you about abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism in OOPs.

After learning about these concepts, you will learn about data structure arrays and ArrayLists. The course will help you understand these key concepts through their operations and set up the environment for the succeeding modules. 

You will also learn about identifying the requirements of a software product and how you can use that information to select a production’s applications and features. Understanding these fundamental concepts will give you a strong foundation for learning Big Data and its various sub-sections. 

The course comes with multiple assignments and in the early stage, you will have to complete two assignments. The first of them would be on Requirements Identification while the second one is on Module Level Implementation where you will have to implement various modules within your application. 

Advanced Concepts of Programming

Once you have completed the previous sections on the fundamentals of programming, our program will begin teaching you intermediate and advanced concepts of this field. 

Many of the implementations you perform in Big Data require you to be familiar with these concepts, that’s why we have multiple modules in this section. Some of the primary concepts you will learn in this section include:

Integration and Testing

You will learn about integrating different components of a product so they can work together and test the product to identify and fix any fault points. 

SDLC and Agile Methodology

You will learn about the Software Development Life Cycle and the various steps present in the development of a software product. We’ll also cover the Agile methodologies and explain how they work. 

Object-Oriented Design

You will learn about the importance and applications of Object-Oriented Design and UML Diagrams. 

Testing and Version Control

Unit testing is when you test individual units of a software product. You will learn about unit testing and the characteristics of Test Driven Development and Code Refactoring. The course also teaches you modern software engineering practices and skills by contributing to an existing software project. 

You will learn about data structures and algorithms and how you can use them. Some additional key concepts you will study include Big-oh, runtime+memory analysis, time vs space tradeoff, algorithmic complexity of problems and how to make their implementations more efficient. 

You will learn about the use and applications of various data structures such as Binary Search Trees, Hash Tables, and Trees. 

Once you have studied all the advanced concepts of programming, you’d have to give an exam on all the coding applications you learned. It will help you test your knowledge and identify your weak areas. 

Big Data Fundamentals 

In this section, we’ll introduce you to Big Data and explain what it is, what its characteristics are, and its determining factors. After making you familiar with Big Data, we’ll help you understand what is cloud and set up an AWS (Amazon Web Services) account as it’ll be necessary for the following sections of the program.

You will learn about Dimensional and Relational data modelling, distributed systems and their programming model and some primary tools necessary for Big Data implementations. 

The course will make you familiar with the world of distributed data processing and storage through Hadoop, the most prominent Big Data technology. You will learn about writing MapReduce jobs in Python during this module too. 

Advanced Concepts of Big Data

In the final quarter of our course, you will be learning all the advanced skills a Big Data professional must possess. Some of the key concepts you will be learning in this section are:

Large Scale Data Processing

The course will introduce you to Apache Spark, a fast big data processing engine and you will use Spark to build large scale data processing solutions. 

ETL and Data Ingestion

You will learn about ETL (Extract, Transfer, Load), the basics of data ingestion and the primary challenges you might face in the same. You will learn about Sqoop and Flume and how you can ingest data into Hadoop with them. 

NoSQL Databases

We will teach you about NoSQL databases and how you can use Apache HBase and MongoDB with them. 

Hive and Querying

You will get acquainted with Apache Hive, a necessary data warehouse management tool. With the help of Hive, you’ll manage and query a data warehouse and learn to write HQL for large scale data analysis. 

Apart from these concepts, this section of our Big Data course will teach you about a ton of other technologies and Big Data concepts. You will learn about Apache Flink, Spark Streaming, Amazon Redshift, IntelliJ, Apache Spark Structured Streaming, and much more. 

There’ll be an exam at the end of this module where you will get to test your Big Data skills and knowledge. There will also be a Capstone Group Project where you will have to apply all the concepts you have learned so far. 

Additional Features of upGrad’s Big Data Course

The Big Data course syllabus we shared above is just the tip of the iceberg. Our PG Diploma in Software Development Specialisation in Big Data program has many additional highlights. 

First, it’s completely online so you can learn from the comfort of your home without interrupting your student or professional life. There are over 400 hours of content available in this course with 7+ projects and case studies. 

After completing this program, you’d get IIIT Bangalore alumni status and completion certificate from upGrad and IIIT-B. We also hold a Career Transition Bootcamp to help professionals in non-tech backgrounds enter the tech industry. You will receive 1:1 mentorship sessions with experts, employability tests, exhaustive lists of interview questions, and much more. 

Be sure to check out the course and let us know what you think about it. 

Check our other Software Engineering Courses at upGrad.

Conclusion

There are many modules present in our course. If you want to learn more about our PG Diploma in Software Development Specialisation in Big Data program, we recommend checking the course page as it gives a detailed overview of the course syllabus and highlights. 

What are your thoughts on the course? Do let us know in the comments below!