Hands-On Labs are sets of step-by-step guides that are designed to help you learn how to use key Windows Azure services and features. Each Lab provides instructions to guide you through the process of developing a complete application.

This is a preview of a set of hands on labs covering:

• Lab 1 creates a MapReduce job in C#, javascript and F# then runs the job on an Azure cluster using HDInsight.
• Lab 2 chains multiple MapReduce jobs together.
• Lab 3 imports tab separated data into an Azure cluster using Hive-based connectivity and then analyses the data using HiveQL.
• Lab 4 uses the Hive ODBC driver to export data from an HDInsight cluster into Excel then visualise the data using PivotTable and PivotChart.
• Lab 5 demonstrates how to use Mahout to build a recommendation engine using collaborative filtering.

In the Source folder you will find the source code of each of the labs/exercises, as well as the assets and setup scripts. Throughout the HOL you will be instructed to open and explore the different solutions from the source folder. It is typically comprised of the following subfolders:

These labs are geared towards developers. If you are new to HDInsight, please check out a seperate intro lab at: https://github.com/WindowsAzure-TrainingKit/HOL-WindowsAzureHDInsight.

If you find any issues or opportunties for improving this hands-on lab, fix them! Feel free to contribute to this project by forking this repository and make changes to the content. Once you've made your changes, share them back with the community by sending a pull request. Please see GitHub section How to send pull requests and the Windows Azure Contribution Guidelines for more information about contributing to projects.

If you find any issues with this hands-on lab that you can't fix, feel free to report them in the issues section of this repository.