HomeAuthor InterviewsInterview With Author Ishan Gaur

Interview With Author Ishan Gaur

Ishan Gaur is the author of Serverless ETL and Analytics with AWS Glue, we got the chance to sit down with him and find out more about his experience of writing with Packt.

Q: What is/are your specialist tech area(s)?

Ishan: Subject Matter Expert in AWS Glue , ETL and Apache Spark and Other BI Technologies.

Q: How did you become an author for Packt? Tell us about your journey. What was your motivation for writing this book?

Ishan: I started writing BigData wiki pages on github (https://github.com/isgaur/AWS-BigData-Solutions/wiki), that’s where I developed the interest of writing for the BigData community .When I became Glue Subject Matter Expert Packt reached out to check If I can contribute to writing AWS Glue book as a co-author and also work as a technical reviewer. I believed it was a great opportunity. Hence I decided I could offer a comprehensive pool of extensive knowledge I had to Data Engineers , Analysts and ETL developers who were seeking knowledge to use AWS Glue at scale. I believe, that writing a book on AWS Glue will help the learning community to follow a track and understand better about different concepts available with AWS Glue to implement BigData solutions.

Q: What kind of research did you do, and how long did you spend researching before beginning the book?

Ishan: As a Glue SME I was confident about writing the book but I did a bit of research on the real world and some of the edge case scenarios which could help the BigData community including Data Engineers , Analysts , ETL developers and others to develop ETL solutions at scale.It took about 1-2 months to plan the entire content.

Q: Did you face any challenges during the writing process? How did you overcome them?

Ishan: Yes managing the time to prepare the content and hands on lab. At times I find it hard to set aside hours needed to write the content. I am glad it all worked in the end and I was able to finish writing the content.

Q: What’s your take on the technologies discussed in the book? Where do you see these technologies heading in the future?

Ishan: AWS Glue uses Apache Spark which is one of the heavily used distribution framework in BigData ecosystem and AWS Glue provides an excellent integration capability to tighten all the loose ends in order to build data lakes, perform data processing , Catalog your datasets in a central place etc. It is still getting matured day by day and I certainly expect it to grow more over the next couple of years. The adoption is growing rapidly at the same time by the industry.

Q: Why should readers choose this book over others already on the market? How would you differentiate your book from its competition?

Ishan: At the time of writing there were no competing books fortunately. However what makes this book different than other technology books is , we have focused heavily on explaining the different concepts with as much as practical knowledge. There are multiple hands-on labs across the book which can help to build confidence for the end users when it comes to learning.

Q: What are the key takeaways you want readers to come away with from the book?

Ishan: Learn fundamentals of AWS Glue along with ETL by doing more and more hands-on. Practice with simple use cases and slowly march towards advance or edge case scenarios. Learn about various optimization techniques explained.

Q. What advice would you give to readers learning tech? Do you have any top tips?

Ishan: Do more and more hands-on through out the journey of going through the book.

Q. Do you have a blog that readers can follow?

Ishan: Not currently but my old articles can be found here https://github.com/isgaur/AWS-BigData-Solutions/wiki along with multiple ready to use BigData solutions https://github.com/isgaur/AWS-BigData-Solutions

Q. Can you share any blogs, websites, and forums to help readers gain a holistic view of the tech they are learning?

Ishan: I’d strongly recommend AWS Community Groups as a great place to share knowledge and ask questions: https://repost.aws/

Q. How would you describe your author journey with Packt? Would you recommend Packt to aspiring authors?

Ishan: It was an amazing experience working with Packt. Yes I would certainly recommend others without a doubt.

Q. Do you belong to any tech community groups?

Ishan: AWS repost Community

Q. What are your favorite tech journals? How do you keep yourself up to date on tech?

Ishan: I read most of the tech blogs and websites regularly. Whenever I find something new and interesting I add it to my GitHub – https://github.com/isgaur/AWS-BigData-Solutions/wiki and https://github.com/isgaur/AWS-BigData-Solutions/

Q. How did you organize, plan, and prioritize your work and write the book?

Ishan: We created all the chapters outline and detailed out what I would be covering as a co-author. All the planning to come up with the book outline helped to a great extent.

Q. What is that one writing tip that you found most crucial and would like to share with aspiring authors?

Ishan: Think big , as in if you are the end user who would be reading the book and what would most intrigue you as a reader. That way you think from the readers mindset first and write effective content which serves the intent of writing the book for the community.

Q. Would you like to share your social handles? If so, please share.

Ishan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishan-gaur-4a53a79a

You can find Ishan‘s book on Amazon by following this link: Please click here


Serverless ETL and Analytics with AWS Glue – Available on Amazon.com