Apache Geode Update

It’s been a few months since Project Geode, the open source core of Pivotal Gemfire, was announced. Since then, the Apache Software Foundation accepted Pivotal’s proposal to incubate Geode as a collaborative development project, and we’ve successfully moved all the project interaction onto the Apache infrastructure. You now have the opportunity to support the powerful Geode technology, which powers commercial high scale banking applications, Internet of Things in-memory analytics, and scale-out digital customer experience infrastructure, such as servicing digital ticket purchases for the largest human migration in the world during Chinese New Year.

Here’s where you can find the Apache Geode project, get hold of the software, and interact with the community:

• Apache Geode (incubating) official site
• Apache Geode nightly builds
• Apache Geode nightly builds in a docker image
• Interact with fellow Geode contributors and developers

Meet Fellow Members of the Apache Geode Community

As part of the launch of Apache Geode, we have rolled out a busy calendar of activities including an exhibition at ApacheCon North America in Austin, and a series of Meetups.  The fun is just beginning: we are already seeing Java User Groups join in. Our next virtual community meeting, Apache Geode Clubhouse, is scheduled for June 25, at 9AM PST.  We are planning another series of activities at OSCON Portland in July, and will be making an appearance at ApacheCon Europe in the fall.

Bring Apache Geode to Your Community

One of our approaches in developing the Apache Geode community is to share as much knowledge and as many assets as possible. To this end, we’ve open sourced a lot of training materials about Geode, which are available from the Project Geode Github repo.

Since our roll-out, community members have also contributed the following talks and demos:

• Apache Geode Architecture
• Apache Geode Cluster Failover & Chaos Monkey Demo showing what happens when a node goes down in a cluster
• Building a Predictive analytics Stocks System with Apache Geode and Spring XD with demo

You are welcome to use and adapt any of these materials. If you build any of your own, please consider contributing them to Pivotal Open Source Hub or the Apache Geode Github repo.

Building the Next Apache Geode Collaboratively

Another big change is the incorporation of The Apache Way into the development process for Apache Geode and Pivotal Gemfire.  This is important because our goal is to expand  the number of committers to Apache Geode beyond just the Pivotal Gemfire development team, which continues to develop both the Geode technology and Pivotal Gemfire.

The specifics of how contribution and commit processes will work are being discussed in the Apache Geode dev newsgroup. Here’s the basics so far:

• Source code resides in Apache Geode (incubating) Github repo
• Issues are tracked in the Apache Geode JIRA.
• To propose a change in the Apache Geode source code, open a JIRA issue, and start a discussion in the Apache Geode dev newsgroup.

You can find the details of project operation in the Apache Geode Wiki.

Where Might Apache Geode Go?

In a recent blog, my colleague Roman Shaposhnik posed the question “Where might the Apache Way Take Project Geode?” The reality is that where it goes depends on the community of users and contributors to the Apache Geode technology. This outlook is articulated in  the proposed vision statement listed as Apache Geode-1 in the project JIRA:

While achieving the level of maturity required to graduate to the status of the TLP project we might as well take care of world domination while we are at it. After all, it may be possible to do to RAM what HDFS has done to disk and Geode may very well be the thing that does it!

The Apache Geode wiki lists a number of ideas for contributions.

And finally the Geode developers at Pivotal are making a big code drop that includes a number of new, and still in development features, as documented in Apache Geode-8:

• Off heap data storage – increase per node in-memory capacity
• Merge Gemfire tests to Geode – improving tools for developer unit testing
• Spark integration – expose Gemfire data as RDD, RDD as Gemfire data
• HDFS integration – ingest and archive data in-memory with consistency to Hadoop
• Lucene integration – in-memory indexing and search of text across Gemfire cluster data
• Merge Pulse source code – open source the Gemfire monitoring tool
• Merge Hibernate L2 cache code – Apache Tomcat-compatible code providing environment resilient, scale-out hibernation capability invisible to applications
• Merge HTTP session management module – Apache Tomcat compatible code providing environment resilient, scale-out hibernation capability invisible to applications
• Integrated security – single security model covering cache clients, JMX and GFSH clients, and REST API
• Distributed transactions – Supporting more complex application data models that span across shards

Support the Geode Technology: Join the Community Today!

Here are three ways to support the Geode technology:

1. Download and use the software, and report any bugs or issues.
2. Develop your expertise and share it with others at Meetups and technology user group meetings.  You can share any informational materials or demos you create with the community. This could be especially valuable time well spent if you are a consultant or implementer in in-memory computing technologies.
3. Contribute code.  This doesn’t only mean contributing code to Apache Geode itself, but also utilizing Geode technology in other open source projects.