A user-defined function (UDF) is a function provided by the user of a program or environment, in a context where the usual assumption is that functions are built into the program or environment. Although the term is widely known in Hadoop components such Hive and Pig, it is also used in other contexts such programming languages and some DBMSs.
From the docs:
Introduction
Pig provides extensive support for user defined functions (UDFs) as a way to specify custom processing. Pig UDFs can currently be implemented in three languages: Java, Python, and JavaScript.
The most extensive support is provided for Java functions. You can customize all parts of the processing including data load/store, column transformation, and aggregation. Java functions are also more efficient because they are implemented in the same language as Pig and because additional interfaces are supported such as the Algebraic Interface and the Accumulator Interface.
Limited support is provided for Python and JavaScript functions. These functions are new, still evolving, additions to the system. Currently only the basic interface is supported; load/store functions are not supported. Furthermore, JavaScript is provided as an experimental feature because it did not go through the same amount of testing as Java or Python. At runtime note that Pig will automatically detect the usage of a scripting UDF in the Pig script and will automatically ship the corresponding scripting jar, either Jython or Rhino, to the backend.
