More and more large data collections are gathered worldwide in various IT systems. Many of them possess the networked nature and need to be processed and analysed as graph structures. Due to their size they require very often usage of parallel paradigm for efficient computation. Three parallel techniques have been compared in the paper: MapReduce, its map-side join extension and Bulk Synchronous Parallel (BSP). They are implemented for two different graph problems: calculation of single source shortest paths (SSSP) and collective classification of graph nodes by means of relational influence propagation (RIP). The methods and algorithms are applied to several network datasets differing in size and structural profile, originating from three domains: telecommunication, multimedia and microblog. The results revealed that iterative graph processing with the BSP implementation always and significantly, even up to 10 times outperforms MapReduce, especially for algorithms with many iterations and sparse communication. Also MapReduce extension based on map-side join usually noticeably presents better efficiency, although not as much as BSP. Nevertheless, MapReduce still remains the good alternative for enormous networks, whose data structures do not fit in local memories.
@cite_19: Abstract The MapReduce framework has been generating a lot of interest in a wide range of areas. It has been widely adopted in industry and has been used to solve a number of non-trivial problems in academia. Putting MapReduce on strong theoretical foundations is crucial in understanding its capabilities. This work links MapReduce to the BSP model of computation, underlining the relevance of BSP to modern parallel algorithm design and deﬁning a subclass of BSP algorithms that can be efficiently implemented in MapReduce.
@cite_19 provided a theoretical comparison of BSP and MapReduce models. In terms of graph processing, they noticed, that Breadth First Search algorithm (for the shortest path computation) cannot be efficiently implemented by means of the MapReduce model. In this paper, we go forward and focus more on an empirical comparison for the real world data sets, using available implementations as well as evaluation for additional graph problem - collective classification. The general conclusions remain the same: BSP usually appears to be better model for solving graph problems than MapReduce. The results included in this paper provide quantitative analyses supporting that statement.