**Why stages matter**: Stages = units of parallelism; boundaries = shuffles. **Stages**: DAG split at shuffle boundaries; each stage = set of tasks (1 per partition). **Optimization**: Reduce shuffles (broadcast); partition well; cache; AQE. For large data: partition pruning; avoid skew; right-size. **Scalability trade-offs**: Fewer stages = less overhead; more shuffles = more cost. **Cost implications**: Shuffle = network + disk; minimize....
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