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Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:04:04 -0700
From: Andrew Hart <ahart@apache.org>
Organization: Apache Software Foundation
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To: general@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Gora to enter Incubator
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+1 (not binding)

This really strikes a chord with me and I would love to help out with 
this project in any way that I can. I'm a committer on the incubating 
OODT project and have experience with a variety of the "traditional" 
ORM's, developing web interfaces, and data modeling.

-Andrew.

On 9/14/10 9:47 AM, Doug Cutting wrote:
> +1 Sounds like a great project.
>
> Doug
>
> On 09/13/2010 06:10 AM, Enis Soztutar wrote:
>    
>> Hi all,
>>
>> We would like to announce the Proposal for Gora, an ORM for Colum Stores,
>> for the Apache Incubation. We believe that Gora can find a nice home at
>> Apache.
>>
>> Wiki of the proposal can be found at
>> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/GoraProposal
>>
>> The proposal is as below.
>>
>>
>> = Gora Proposal for Apache Incubation =
>>
>> == Abstract ==
>> Gora is an ORM framework for column stores such as Apache HBase and Apache
>> Cassandra with a specific focus on Hadoop.
>>
>> == Proposal ==
>> Although there are various excellent ORM frameworks for relational
>> databases, data modeling in NoSQL data stores differ profoundly from their
>> relational cousins. Moreover, data-model agnostic frameworks such as JDO are
>> not sufficient for use cases, where one needs to use the full power of the
>> data models in column stores. Gora fills this gap by giving the user an
>> easy-to-use ORM framework with data store specific mappings and built in
>> Apache Hadoop support.
>>
>> The overall goal for Gora is to become the standard data representation and
>> persistence framework for big data. The roadmap of Gora can be grouped as
>> follows.
>>
>>    * Data Persistence : Persisting objects to Column stores such as HBase,
>> Cassandra, Hypertable; key-value stores such as Voldermort, Redis, etc; SQL
>> databases, such as MySQL, HSQLDB, flat files in local file system of Hadoop
>> HDFS.
>>    * Data Access : An easy to use Java-friendly common API for accessing the
>> data regardless of its location.
>>    * Indexing : Persisting objects to Lucene and Solr indexes,
>> accessing/querying the data with Gora API.
>>    * Analysis : Accesing the data and making analysis through adapters for
>> Apache Pig, Apache Hive and Cascading
>>    * MapReduce support : Out-of-the-box and extensive MapReduce (Apache
>> Hadoop) support for data in the data store.
>>
>> == Background ==
>> ORM stands for Object Relation Mapping. It is a technology which abstacts
>> the persistency layer
>> (mostly Relational Databases) so that plain domain level objects can be
>> used, without the cumbersome effort to save/load the data to and from the
>> database. Gora differs from current solutions in that:
>>    * Gora is specially focussed at NoSQL data stores, but also has limited
>> support for SQL databases
>>    * The main use case for Gora is to access/analyze big data using Hadoop.
>>    * Gora uses Avro for bean definition, not byte code enhancement or
>> annotations
>>    * Object-to-data store mappings are backend specific, so that full data
>> model can be utilized.
>>    * Gora is simple since it ignores complex SQL mappings
>>    * Gora will support persistence, indexing and anaysis of data, using Pig,
>> Lucene, Hive, etc
>>
>> == Rationale ==
>> ORM frameworks are nothing new. But with the explosion of data generated in
>> Terabytes and even Petabytes, NoSQL data stores are gaining ever-increasing
>> popularity. Coupled with limited support to already-proven Apache Hadoop
>> support in current ORM frameworks, there was a need for a new project.
>>
>> Gora is currently hosted at Github. However, Gora has ties to ASF in many
>> ways. As detailed in the proposal section, Gora will be a high level client
>> for many Apache projects and subprojects including Hadoop(common, hdfs, and
>> mapreduce), HBase, Cassandra, Avro, Lucene, Solr, Pig, and Hive. Gora
>> already uses Hadoop, HBase, Cassandra and Avro. Moreover, Gora started its
>> life inside Apache Nutch project, and now Nutch trunk uses Gora as a
>> library. Even more, the initial set of committers are all ASF members.
>> Therefore, we think that Apache will be an excellent home for Gora.
>>
>> == Initial Goals ==
>> Initial goals for Gora can be summarized as:
>>    * Iron out the remaining issues with HBase, Cassandra and SQL support.
>>    * Make the first release before the end of the year.
>>    * Improve documentation
>>    * Support for Cascading
>>
>> == Current Status ==
>> === Meritocracy ===
>> Current commit rights belong to the initial list of committers four of who
>> are also ASF members. All the developers have extensive experience with
>> Apache projects. We honor the meritocracy policy of ASF foundation.
>>
>> === Community ===
>> Gora’s community mostly overlap with that of Nutch, Hadoop, HBase, Avro and
>> Cassandra. We
>> have a small community for now (5 initial committers, 18 people tracking the
>> project at Github), but have been piggybacking the Nutch community for a
>> while. If Gora is accepted to Apache Incubator, we expect more traction.
>> Moreover, with the increasing popularity of NoSQL databases, we expect more
>> users.
>>
>> === Core Developers ===
>> Gora was started by the initial code base inside Apache Nutch by Doğacan
>> Güney. Then Enis Söztutar has refactored and re-architected the project out
>> of Nutch. Later Julien Nioche, Andrzej Bialecki and Doğacan has ported Nutch
>> to use the newly formed project. Later, Sertan Alkan has joined. Doğacan and
>> Julien are Nutch PMC members, Andrzej is the Nutch PMC chair. Enis is an
>> Apache Hadoop PMC member.
>>
>> === Alignment ===
>> As discusssed in the second paragraph of Rationale Section, all of the
>> current developers are Apache people, and four of them are PMC members,
>> which shows that we have some experience with the Apache way. Moreover, Gora
>> is tightly related with lots of Apache projects, Nutch, Hadoop, HBase,
>> Cassandra, Avro, Pig, Hive, Lucene to name a few. Gora has started its life
>> inside Nutch, and now nutch trunk uses Gora to persist web crawl data to
>> HBase, Cassandra and MySQL, which means that Gora is a very critical
>> component in Nutch.
>>
>> == Known Risks ==
>> === Orphaned Products ===
>> Most of the development depends on Enis and Doğacan for now. Both of them
>> intent to continue Gora development. However, we also acknowledge that more
>> core developers are needed for the project to be truly successful. The
>> general strategy to acquire more developers will be to acquire more users,
>> and encourage users to be active in the community and develop patches.
>> Moreover, the next release of Nutch planned before the end of 2010 has
>> extensive Gora support. We expect more interest from Nutch community, and we
>> will continue to announce Gora notifications at Hadoop,HBase and Cassandra
>> mailing lists.
>>
>> === Inexperience with Open Source ===
>> We believe that all of the developers have extensive open source experience.
>> Four of the initial committers are apache members. The codebase is also open
>> source since April 2010. We also have some documentation, wiki pages, issue
>> tracker and dev mailing list.
>>
>> === Homogeneous Developers ===
>> We have a semi-distributed development environment where Doğacan, Enis and
>> Sertan share the same office, but Andrzej and Julien are independent. With
>> the aim of acquiring more developers, we expect more heterogeneous
>> development.
>>
>> === Reliance on Salaried Developers ===
>> Gora development have been supported by [[ant.com]]  search engine as
>> contract work. It is expected that this contract will continue in the
>> future. However, even without sponsors, we are commited to continue on Gora
>> development, since we believe in the technology it brings and it’s vital
>> role in Nutch, and our other closed sourced projects.
>>
>> === Relationships with Other Apache Products ===
>> Gora will be tightly related to lots of Apache projects:
>>
>>    * Nutch : Apache nutch was to home to Gora’s initial code base. Now, Nutch
>> trunk uses Gora as a library. The next relase of Nutch, planned before the
>> end of 2010 will be using Gora’s first release.
>>    * Hadoop : Gora has extensive support for Hadoop MapReduce Gora defines all
>> the necessary data structures for working with Hadoop .Data stored in column
>> oriented data stores can be analyzed  with Gora using Hadoop.
>>    * Avro : Gora uses and extends Avro. Data beans in Gora are defined using
>> Avro schemas ,and compiled into Java code with the extended version of the
>> Avro compiler. Avro is also used in data serialization.
>>    * HBase : Gora supports HBase as a persistency backend.
>>    * Cassandra : Gora support Cassandra as a persistency backend.
>>    * Lucene/Solr : Gora intends to support Lucene/Solr as a persistency and
>> indexing backend.
>>    * Pig : Gora intends to support Pig for data anaysis
>>    * Hive :  Gora intends to support Hive for data analysis
>>
>> === An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ===
>> Gora is a natural fit for Apache due to it's current commiters and depending
>> projects.
>>
>> == Documentation ==
>>    * The project is currently hosted at http://github.com/enis/gora/.
>>    * Wiki pages can be found at http://wiki.github.com/enis/gora/.
>>    * List of issues can be found at  http://github.com/enis/gora/issues/.
>>    * Current web address: http://groups.google.com/group/gora-dev.
>>    * Current email address: gora-dev@googlegroups.com.
>>
>> == Initial Source ==
>> The initial source was developed as a patch to the Apache Nutch project. But
>> the storage abstraction layer was orthogonal to the web crawler, and we
>> decided to extract it to a separate project with much wider goals. Thus
>> Gora, as a project, was born. The initial code is developed by Enis and
>> Dogacan with ant.com’s sponsorship.
>>
>> The code can be found at http://github.com/enis/gora/.
>>
>> == External Dependencies ==
>> External dependencies excluding Apache projects are as follows
>>    * JDOM - http://jdom.org/ -  Apache-style license
>>    * SQL Builder - http://openhms.sourceforge.net/sqlbuilder/ - Artistic
>> License, LGPL. SQL Builder is intended to be removed from the source due to
>> technical reasons anyway.
>>    * HSQLDB - http://hsqldb.org/ - BSD-style license
>>    * JUnit - http://junit.org - Common Public License 1.0
>>    * SLF4J - http://www.slf4j.org/ - MIT License
>>    * Google Guava Libraries - http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/ -
>> Apache License 2.0
>>
>>
>> == Required Resources ==
>>
>> === Mailing Lists ===
>>
>>    * gora-private (with moderated subscriptions)
>>    * gora-dev
>>    * gora-commits
>>
>> === Subversion Directory ===
>>
>>    * [[http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/gora]]
>>
>> === Issue Tracking ===
>>    * JIRA (GORA)
>>
>> === Other Resources ===
>> We need a wiki at http://wiki.apache.org. Currently, we have a wiki at
>> Github, Since there is not a lot of pages there, we can manually move the
>> pages to the wiki at wiki.apache.org.
>>
>> == Initial Committers ==
>>
>> Name                   email
>> Affiliation        Timezone
>> Enis Söztutar       enis [at] apache.org           Konneka         +3
>> Doğacan Güney  dogacan [at] apache.org    Konneka         +3
>> Sertan Alkan       sertanalkan [at] gmail.com Konneka         +3
>> Julien Nioche       jnioche [at] apache.org      DigitalPebble  +1
>> Andrzej Bialecki   ab [at] apache.org             Sigram
>>
>>
>> === Affiliations ===
>> All of the parties are affiliated with open source consulting shops. Most of
>> the development was sponsored by ant.com, however we expect that the amount
>> of volunteer work will increase, and more developers will come on board.
>>
>> == Sponsors ==
>>
>> === Champion ===
>>     * Chris Mattmann (mattmann AT apache DOT org)
>>
>> === Nominated Mentors ===
>>     * Chris Mattmann (mattmann AT apache DOT org)
>>     * Andrzej Bialecki (ab AT apache DOT org )
>>
>> === Sponsoring Entity ===
>> Apache Incubator. Successful graduation can result in either being a TLP, or
>> a subproject of
>> Hadoop, since most of the community is projected to overlap.
>>
>>      
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