International Journal of Information & Computation Technology. ISSN 0974-2239 Volume 4, Number 9 (2014), pp. 869-878 © International Research Publications House http://www. irphouse.com A Systematic Approach to Big Data Exploration of the Hadoop Framework Anand Loganathan, Ankur Sinha, Muthuramakrishnan V., and Srikanth Natarajan Dept of Computer Science & Engineering, SRM University Chennai, India Abstract With the growing developments and advancements in the fields of computing, it is necessary for institutions and organizations to handle large masses of data at faster speeds. Not only are the sizes of data increasing, so are the varied file types. Due to the inadequacy of traditional file management systems to handle this kind of large data, a need for a more appropriate system arose. This need led to the introduction and development of Big Data Technology. Big Data Technology includes different modules capable of moving beyond exabytes of data. In this paper, we provide a comparison between relational and non-relational database systems, their uses, implementations, advantages and disadvantages. Apart from this, we also provide an in-depth overview of the modules related to Hadoop, a Big Data management framework. Keywords: Big Data, Apache Hadoop, NoSQL, Databases 1. Introduction The exponential growth of data in today’s world has necessitated a paradigm shift in the way we manage and process data. Various fields such as banking, business informatics, meteorology, sports and medicine have felt the need for expanding the horizons of data management and mining. The traditional structure of relational database systems is not accoutered to handle this kind of data. Hence, the advancement into what is known as Big Data Technology today was not only unavoidable but also inexorable. The need to look beyond traditional and relational databases led to the introduction of the non-relational databases such as the NoSQL (Not Only SQL). The NoSQL architecture was designed to address the problems of massive horizontal scalability and agility. In this paper, we draw comparisons between the relational and non-