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MaxCompute:Spark Overview

Last Updated:Aug 21, 2026

MaxCompute Spark is an open source-compatible Spark computing service provided by MaxCompute. Built on a unified computing resource and dataset permission system, it provides the Spark computing framework and allows users to submit and run Spark jobs in a familiar development approach to support a wider range of data processing and analytics scenarios.

Key features

  • Support for native multi-version Spark jobs

    Native community Spark runs on MaxCompute, fully compatible with Spark APIs, and supports multiple Spark versions.

  • Unified computing resources

    MaxCompute Spark runs on the unified computing resources enabled for MaxCompute projects, same as other task types such as MaxCompute SQL and MapReduce.

  • Unified data and permission management

    Follows the permission system of MaxCompute projects to securely query data within the user's permission scope.

  • Same user experience as open source systems

    Provides native open source real-time Spark UI and query history log features.

Supported features

MaxCompute Spark currently supports the following features:

  • Offline computing: GraphX, MLlib, RDD, Spark-SQL, PySpark, and more.

  • Read and write MaxCompute table data.

  • Reference file resources in MaxCompute.

  • Access services in Alibaba Cloud VPC environments.

  • Access Alibaba Cloud OSS unstructured storage.

  • Read MaxCompute OSS external tables.

  • DataWorks Notebook

Limits

MaxCompute Spark currently does not support the following scenarios:

  • Interactive scenarios such as Spark-Shell, Spark-SQL-Shell, and PySpark-Shell are not supported.

  • Access to MaxCompute built-in functions and user-defined functions (MaxCompute UDFs) is not supported.

  • Access to MaxCompute external tables other than OSS external tables is not supported.