A large-scale data processing system and method for processing data in a distributed and parallel processing environment is disclosed. The system comprises a set of interconnected computing systems, each having one or more processors and memory. The set of interconnected computing systems include: a set of application-independent map modules for reading portions of input files containing data, and for producing intermediate data values by applying at least one user-specified, application-specific map operation to the data; a set of intermediate data structures distributed among a plurality of the interconnected computing systems for storing the intermediate data values; and a set of application-independent reduce modules, distinct from the plurality of application-independent map modules, for producing final output data by applying at least one user-specified, application-specific reduce operation to the intermediate data values.