Using the Notebook Interpreter Modes

Notebooks provide three different interpreter modes: shared, scoped and isolated. These modes provide different ways to share the same interpreter settings across notebooks. Each interpreter is a JVM process talking to the Zeppelin daemon. The interpreter modes are as offered by the open-source Apache Zeppelin. You can specify these modes as globally or per note.

The three interpreter modes are:

• shared - a single JVM process and a single session serves all notes. As a result, note A can access variables (e.g python, scala, ..) directly which are initialized in other notes.
• scoped -Zeppelin runs a single interpreter JVM process but each note runs in its own dedicated session.
• isolated - runs a separate interpreter process for each note. So, each note has an absolutely isolated session.

The three interpreter modes are shown as illustrated here.

Perform the following steps to change the interpreter mode:

1. Go to a specific running Notebook’s page, and click on Interpreters.
2. On the Interpreters page, click on the interpreter’s name to expand it.
3. Click edit.
4. From the drop-down list, select the appropriate interpreter mode and whether it is per note or global.