Apache Arrow

Definitions

1. A cross-language columnar memory format designed for efficient analytical processing. Unlike Parquet (on-disk), Arrow defines how data lives in RAM, enabling zero-copy data sharing between systems (Pandas ↔ Spark ↔ DuckDB) without serialization overhead. The backbone of modern data tooling.

   In plain English: A standard way to organize data in memory (RAM) so different tools can share it instantly without converting formats.

   Example: "Arrow flight lets us stream query results from the data warehouse to Python with zero serialization — the bytes in memory are already Arrow format."

Related Terms

• Cache
• Memory Allocation
• Memory Pool
• Page Fault
• Memory Leak
• CPU Cache
• Dynamic Memory Allocation
• Heap Memory
• Lazy Initialization
• Page Cache
• Random Access
• String Builder
• Write Back