Does mahout work real time or does it pre-process the data based on the algorithm rules?

Question

I am trying to build a recommendation engine, for that I am thinking of using apache mahout but I am unable to make out if mahout process the data in real time or does it pre-process the data when the server is idle and store the results somewhere in the database.

Also does anyone have any idea what approach do sites like amazon,netflix follow?

Answer 1

Either/or, but not both. There are parts inside from an older project that are essentially real time for moderate scale. There are also Hadoop based implementations which are all offline. The two are not related.

I am a primary creator of these parts, and if you want a system that does both together, I suggest you look at my current project Myrrix (http://myrrix.com)