Difference between collect and as.data.frame in sparkR

Question

What is the difference between as.data.frame() and collect(), when heaving a DataFrame object into local memory?

Answer 1

There is no difference whatsoever. Excluding argument validation Sparkr::as.data.frame is simply implemented with a single call to SparkR::collect:

setMethod("as.data.frame",
          signature(x = "DataFrame"),
          function(x, ...) {
             # Arguments validation      
          }
          collect(x)
        })