Is Apache Spark 3.6 Released?

No information

Apache Spark 3.6 has been released on 13th September 2023

Version

You can check the version of Spark you are using by running the following command in the terminal:
spark-shell --version

About Apache Spark

Apache Spark is a framework that, like with all of Apache endorsed projects, is open-source, which means that it has an extremely active community of users and developers that need not be direct employees of Spark. Nevertheless, Spark was originally developed by the prestigious University UCBerkeley and was then donated to the Apache foundation. Spark features multiple modules that can be useful to a lot of developers from vastly different backgrounds, mainly in the areas of data science and analysis.

One of the main functionalities of Spark is the ease of development that it gives to Java and Kotlin developers. The extremely expressive and simple structure and syntax of the framework give it the power to be very helpful for programmers to develop complex applications and keep the backend as simple as it can be. Spark has immense power when developing machine learning applications because of the native module Spark MLlib, which allows complex processes to go smoothly and be at the disposition of the programmer without having to go through the trouble of coding it from scratch or installing and integrating an external module. Spark also has applications in data analysis and visualizations with the native modules that are installed in the framework.

Some of the main features of Spark are crucial to understanding. For example, Spark is entirely modular, meaning that you only need to use the modules and the cores that you require to develop your ideas. It is developed to solve many of the issues with the Java Enterprise framework, which many people come from. This can help new developers come up with more efficient solutions, and also for senior developers that come from Java EE to migrate and optimize their existing applications.

Releases

Spark was launched as we know it on the 30th of May of 2014, but there are some early development releases like version 0.5, which was made available to the public as early as 2012. In fact, the origins of Spark trace back to development in UCBerkeley as early as 2009, where the idea began forming for this tool. After quite some time and a lot of developer efforts, Spark is currently on the 3.1.1 stable release, made available to everyone in March of 2021. Spark has seen so much popularity that an online teaching and course community is forming around the tool, pointing to future widespread usage and more updates to be expected from the developer team.