1. A method, comprising: receiving, by a master node, a data analysis request; creating, by the master node, a plan to generate a response to the request; selecting one or more of a plurality of distributed processing segments to process a corresponding portion of the plan; obtaining, by the master node, metadata associated with one or more portions of the plan to be performed by the one or more corresponding processing segments of the plurality of distributed processing segments; sending, by the master node, to each of the plurality of distributed processing segments for which a portion of the plan is to be processed, the corresponding portion of the plan to be processed by that segment and the metadata, wherein the metadata is used to locate or access a subset of data on which the segment is to perform an indicated processing; receiving, from each of the plurality of distributed processing segments for which a is portion of the plan is assigned, a corresponding result of processing the portion of the plan; and generating, a master response to the data analysis request based at least in part on the corresponding result of processing the portion of the plan received from each of the plurality of distributed processing segments for which a portion of the plan is assigned.