**Architectural Logic**: Filter first; then repartition for parallelism or coalesce to reduce output. **Repartition**: Increase partitions when skewed or under-partitioned; `df.filter(col("region")=="US").repartition(8, "region")`. **Coalesce**: Reduce partitions after filter when data small; avoids empty partitions and many small files. **Why Order**: Filter early to reduce data; repartition for downstream parallelism; coalesce before write....
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