Unable to read, and later query text file in Apache Spark

Question

So I am trying to implement the example Spark Programming Example using a dataset available with us. It is a file which is separated by |. However it throws the following error, even after following the instructions as given.

I can see it is unable to "cast" an object of one instance into another, any advice as to how to handle the scenario.

Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: cannot assign instance of scala.collection.immutable.List$SerializationProxy to field org.apache.spark.rdd.RDD.org$apache$spark$rdd$RDD$$dependencies_ of type scala.collection.Seq in instance of org.apache.spark.rdd.MapPartitionsRDD
    at java.io.ObjectStreamClass$FieldReflector.setObjFieldValues(ObjectStreamClass.java:2133)
    at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.setObjFieldValues(ObjectStreamClass.java:1305)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2024)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:373)
    at scala.collection.immutable.List$SerializationProxy.readObject(List.scala:479)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:1058)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1909)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:373)
    at scala.collection.immutable.List$SerializationProxy.readObject(List.scala:479)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:1058)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1909)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:373)
    at scala.collection.immutable.List$SerializationProxy.readObject(List.scala:479)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor3.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
    at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.invokeReadObject(ObjectStreamClass.java:1058)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1909)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(ObjectInputStream.java:2018)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(ObjectInputStream.java:1942)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(ObjectInputStream.java:1808)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(ObjectInputStream.java:1353)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:373)
    at org.apache.spark.serializer.JavaDeserializationStream.readObject(JavaSerializer.scala:75)
    at org.apache.spark.serializer.JavaSerializerInstance.deserialize(JavaSerializer.scala:114)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.ResultTask.runTask(ResultTask.scala:66)
    at org.apache.spark.scheduler.Task.run(Task.scala:85)
    at org.apache.spark.executor.Executor$TaskRunner.run(Executor.scala:274)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

And one subsidiary question, what is a parquet?

Edit: So I am still unsure about what went wrong, and now I have moved on to a different project. But I feel there was something devilish about the data which I was trying to ingest. Kindly don't downvote the question. Once I have a clearer understanding of the problem, I will accept the best answer from the following lot or myself answer the question(if such a case be).

Answer 1

To use the cast api, you need to call it on a column object inside a dataframe using the $"columnname".cast() api

Parquet is a file format commonly used with Hadoop. Its a columnar data storage format. It means we store columns together instead of rows. This will help with subsequent reads by only requiring us to read the columns of important. So if you have 10 column table, and you only want to read 2 of them, we can leverage the parquet (or orc) format and only read the column of importance, skipping the other 8.