As in the Perl API, a mapper or a reducer can increment various counters by using context.getCounter(“Group”, “Name”).increment(value):

public void map(Text key, Text value, Context context) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
  ...
  context.getCounter("Group", "Name").increment(value);
  ...
}

The getCounter method returns a Counter object, so if a counter is incremented frequently, the getCounter method can be called only once:

public void reduce(Text key, Iterable<IntWritable> values, Context context) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
  ...
  Counter values = context.getCounter("Reducer", "Number of values");
  for (IntWritable value : values) {
    ...
    values.increment(1);
  }
}

The job properties can be set:

• on the command line – the ToolRunner parses options in format -Dname=value. See the syntax of the hadoop script.
• using the Job.getConfiguration() a Configuration object is retrieved. It provides following methods:
  • String get(String name) – get the value of the name property, null if it does not exist.
  • String get(String name, String defaultValue) – get the value of the name property
  • getBoolean, getClass, getFile, getFloat, getInt, getLong, getStrings – return a typed value of the name property (i.e., number, file name, class name, …).
  • set(String name, String value) – set the value of the name property to value.
  • setBoolean, setClass, setFile, setFloat, setInt, setLong, setStrings – set the typed value of the name property (i.e., number, file name, class name, …).
• in a mapper or a reducer, the context object also provides the getConfiguration() method, so the job properties can be accessed in the mappers and reducers too.

Apart from already mentioned brief list of Hadoop properties, there is one important Java-specific property:

• mapred.child.java.opts with default value -Xmx200m. This property sets the Java options used for every task attempt (mapper, reducer, combiner, partitioner). The default value -Xmx200m specifies the maximum size of memory allocation pool. If your mappers and reducers need 1GB memory, use -Xmx1024m. Other Java options can be found in man java.