All,

I would like to gauge the interest in an extension to Accumulo to enable
geospatial capabilities.  Currently, I have developed a schema for storing
raster data as tiles in Accumulo and a plugin to Geoserver that allows
Accumulo tables that use the specified schema to be exposed as WMS layers
for importing into a GIS.  This is a natural fit for Accumulo since the
individual tiles are not large but the aggregate set of tiles that make up
a single layer can become very large.  Accumulo packages those tiles into
blocks and distributes them around the cloud for quick access and redundant
storage.  The implementation is in an early state.

I am currently investigating the feasibility of implementing an API for
storing, querying, and processing vector data in Accumulo.  I would like
the API to be able to answer nearest neighbor queries, perform on-the-fly
reprojections for queries that come in in a particular projection, various
standard geospatial transformations such as buffering and finding
intersections, etc.  My current thought is that the approach would be
similar to how PostGIS extends Postgres in that it dictates a schema and
storage format and then provides a user level api (a bunch of sql
functions) for processing that data.  PostGIS also provides an r-tree index
implemented on top of GiST to enable geospatial querying.  This type of
functionality is also a natural fit for Accumulo as r-tree minimum bounding
rectangles can map to tablet extents.  However, this change would require
modifications to core functionality.  Some mechanism for hooking in
alternative 'extents' may be a technique for dealing with this kind of
indexing scheme.

Is there any interest in these kinds of geospatial processing capabilities
in the Accumulo community and has anyone thought about/implemented some
geospatial functions?

Thanks,
Anthony

Anthony,

It sounds interesting.  I have been thinking about how to start fostering a set of contrib projects for Accumulo, but am unsure how we would manage such things effectively (e.g. how do we make sure they work?  are they versioned and released with Accumulo?).  Perhaps we could begin to work this out with your project.

Billie
----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anthony Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Accumulo dev" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:30:40 PM
> Subject: accumulo geo
> All,
>
> I would like to gauge the interest in an extension to Accumulo to
> enable
> geospatial capabilities. Currently, I have developed a schema for
> storing
> raster data as tiles in Accumulo and a plugin to Geoserver that allows
> Accumulo tables that use the specified schema to be exposed as WMS
> layers
> for importing into a GIS. This is a natural fit for Accumulo since the
> individual tiles are not large but the aggregate set of tiles that
> make up
> a single layer can become very large. Accumulo packages those tiles
> into
> blocks and distributes them around the cloud for quick access and
> redundant
> storage. The implementation is in an early state.
>
> I am currently investigating the feasibility of implementing an API
> for
> storing, querying, and processing vector data in Accumulo. I would
> like
> the API to be able to answer nearest neighbor queries, perform
> on-the-fly
> reprojections for queries that come in in a particular projection,
> various
> standard geospatial transformations such as buffering and finding
> intersections, etc. My current thought is that the approach would be
> similar to how PostGIS extends Postgres in that it dictates a schema
> and
> storage format and then provides a user level api (a bunch of sql
> functions) for processing that data. PostGIS also provides an r-tree
> index
> implemented on top of GiST to enable geospatial querying. This type of
> functionality is also a natural fit for Accumulo as r-tree minimum
> bounding
> rectangles can map to tablet extents. However, this change would
> require
> modifications to core functionality. Some mechanism for hooking in
> alternative 'extents' may be a technique for dealing with this kind of
> indexing scheme.
>
> Is there any interest in these kinds of geospatial processing
> capabilities
> in the Accumulo community and has anyone thought about/implemented
> some
> geospatial functions?
>
> Thanks,
> Anthony

Hey Billie,

A word of warning on contribs: one thing to be wary of is the "drive
by contribution". We found in Hadoop and HBase that many contribs were
added to Hadoop as part of a research project or other "passing
interest", and then not maintained. Since the core committers had very
little knowledge of the contrib components, and the authors were no
longer actively maintaining them, they ended up as rotting appendages
to our codebase. Users would run into issues and then we'd be unable
to help them work through them - not good for anyone.

In HBase, we ended up ejecting our contribs to github. This worked out
well - some have done OK, others have died off. But the ones that died
off had no maintainers anyway - so better to let them die on their own
than drag them forward unmaintained in SVN. We've always had the
stance that, if an HBase-related project on github or elsewhere wants
to enter contrib, then they can do so provided they have active
maintainers who are truly committed to long term maintenance. For
example, our REST server module graduated from contrib into a core
part of our project, since its maintainers are also HBase committers
who run the stuff in production.

Not sure if this is "Apache-like" -- just my opinion as another developer.

-Todd

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Billie J Rinaldi
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anthony,
>
> It sounds interesting.  I have been thinking about how to start fostering a set of contrib projects for Accumulo, but am unsure how we would manage such things effectively (e.g. how do we make sure they work?  are they versioned and released with Accumulo?).  Perhaps we could begin to work this out with your project.
>
> Billie
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Anthony Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: "Accumulo dev" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:30:40 PM
>> Subject: accumulo geo
>> All,
>>
>> I would like to gauge the interest in an extension to Accumulo to
>> enable
>> geospatial capabilities. Currently, I have developed a schema for
>> storing
>> raster data as tiles in Accumulo and a plugin to Geoserver that allows
>> Accumulo tables that use the specified schema to be exposed as WMS
>> layers
>> for importing into a GIS. This is a natural fit for Accumulo since the
>> individual tiles are not large but the aggregate set of tiles that
>> make up
>> a single layer can become very large. Accumulo packages those tiles
>> into
>> blocks and distributes them around the cloud for quick access and
>> redundant
>> storage. The implementation is in an early state.
>>
>> I am currently investigating the feasibility of implementing an API
>> for
>> storing, querying, and processing vector data in Accumulo. I would
>> like
>> the API to be able to answer nearest neighbor queries, perform
>> on-the-fly
>> reprojections for queries that come in in a particular projection,
>> various
>> standard geospatial transformations such as buffering and finding
>> intersections, etc. My current thought is that the approach would be
>> similar to how PostGIS extends Postgres in that it dictates a schema
>> and
>> storage format and then provides a user level api (a bunch of sql
>> functions) for processing that data. PostGIS also provides an r-tree
>> index
>> implemented on top of GiST to enable geospatial querying. This type of
>> functionality is also a natural fit for Accumulo as r-tree minimum
>> bounding
>> rectangles can map to tablet extents. However, this change would
>> require
>> modifications to core functionality. Some mechanism for hooking in
>> alternative 'extents' may be a technique for dealing with this kind of
>> indexing scheme.
>>
>> Is there any interest in these kinds of geospatial processing
>> capabilities
>> in the Accumulo community and has anyone thought about/implemented
>> some
>> geospatial functions?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Anthony
>

--
Todd Lipcon
Software Engineer, Cloudera

At Karaf we set up all of the contribs as their own sub- projects. W e release them seperately and ensure that the core karaf project doesn't depend on the contribs.   This way, if a contrib falls behind , we don't have any depedencies and can easily remove them. I would suggest creating an accumulo-geo sub-project for this reason .  

Mike Van

ASF Committer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Todd Lipcon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2011 5:06:48 PM
Subject: Re: accumulo geo

Hey Billie,

A word of warning on contribs: one thing to be wary of is the "drive
by contribution". We found in Hadoop and HBase that many contribs were
added to Hadoop as part of a research project or other "passing
interest", and then not maintained. Since the core committers had very
little knowledge of the contrib components, and the authors were no
longer actively maintaining them, they ended up as rotting appendages
to our codebase. Users would run into issues and then we'd be unable
to help them work through them - not good for anyone.

In HBase, we ended up ejecting our contribs to github. This worked out
well - some have done OK, others have died off. But the ones that died
off had no maintainers anyway - so better to let them die on their own
than drag them forward unmaintained in SVN. We've always had the
stance that, if an HBase-related project on github or elsewhere wants
to enter contrib, then they can do so provided they have active
maintainers who are truly committed to long term maintenance. For
example, our REST server module graduated from contrib into a core
part of our project, since its maintainers are also HBase committers
who run the stuff in production.

Not sure if this is "Apache-like" -- just my opinion as another developer.

-Todd

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Billie J Rinaldi
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anthony,
>
> It sounds interesting.  I have been thinking about how to start fostering a set of contrib projects for Accumulo, but am unsure how we would manage such things effectively (e.g. how do we make sure they work?  are they versioned and released with Accumulo?).  Perhaps we could begin to work this out with your project.
>
> Billie
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Anthony Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: "Accumulo dev" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:30:40 PM
>> Subject: accumulo geo
>> All,
>>
>> I would like to gauge the interest in an extension to Accumulo to
>> enable
>> geospatial capabilities. Currently, I have developed a schema for
>> storing
>> raster data as tiles in Accumulo and a plugin to Geoserver that allows
>> Accumulo tables that use the specified schema to be exposed as WMS
>> layers
>> for importing into a GIS. This is a natural fit for Accumulo since the
>> individual tiles are not large but the aggregate set of tiles that
>> make up
>> a single layer can become very large. Accumulo packages those tiles
>> into
>> blocks and distributes them around the cloud for quick access and
>> redundant
>> storage. The implementation is in an early state.
>>
>> I am currently investigating the feasibility of implementing an API
>> for
>> storing, querying, and processing vector data in Accumulo. I would
>> like
>> the API to be able to answer nearest neighbor queries, perform
>> on-the-fly
>> reprojections for queries that come in in a particular projection,
>> various
>> standard geospatial transformations such as buffering and finding
>> intersections, etc. My current thought is that the approach would be
>> similar to how PostGIS extends Postgres in that it dictates a schema
>> and
>> storage format and then provides a user level api (a bunch of sql
>> functions) for processing that data. PostGIS also provides an r-tree
>> index
>> implemented on top of GiST to enable geospatial querying. This type of

Todd Lipcon
Software Engineer, Cloudera

I'm fine with whatever guidelines you all put together regarding
contribs.  My plugin is built against an older version of Accumulo so
will need to be ported to the latest version.  Initially, I'm just
inquiring into whether anyone has interest in geo related functionality
and has thought about an architecture for providing that kind of API.

On Fri 28 Oct 2011 05:53:25 PM EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> At Karaf we set up all of the contribs as their own sub-projects. We
> release them seperately and ensure that the core karaf project doesn't
> depend on the contribs. This way, if a contrib falls behind, we don't
> have any depedencies and can easily remove them. I would suggest
> creating an accumulo-geo sub-project for this reason.
>
> Mike Van
>
> ASF Committer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From: *"Todd Lipcon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> *To: *[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> *Cc: *[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> *Sent: *Friday, October 28, 2011 5:06:48 PM
> *Subject: *Re: accumulo geo
>
> Hey Billie,
>
> A word of warning on contribs: one thing to be wary of is the "drive
> by contribution". We found in Hadoop and HBase that many contribs were
> added to Hadoop as part of a research project or other "passing
> interest", and then not maintained. Since the core committers had very
> little knowledge of the contrib components, and the authors were no
> longer actively maintaining them, they ended up as rotting appendages
> to our codebase. Users would run into issues and then we'd be unable
> to help them work through them - not good for anyone.
>
> In HBase, we ended up ejecting our contribs to github. This worked out
> well - some have done OK, others have died off. But the ones that died
> off had no maintainers anyway - so better to let them die on their own
> than drag them forward unmaintained in SVN. We've always had the
> stance that, if an HBase-related project on github or elsewhere wants
> to enter contrib, then they can do so provided they have active
> maintainers who are truly committed to long term maintenance. For
> example, our REST server module graduated from contrib into a core
> part of our project, since its maintainers are also HBase committers
> who run the stuff in production.
>
> Not sure if this is "Apache-like" -- just my opinion as another developer.
>
> -Todd
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Billie J Rinaldi
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Anthony,
> >
> > It sounds interesting. I have been thinking about how to start
> fostering a set of contrib projects for Accumulo, but am unsure how we
> would manage such things effectively (e.g. how do we make sure they
> work? are they versioned and released with Accumulo?). Perhaps we
> could begin to work this out with your project.
> >
> > Billie
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Anthony Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> To: "Accumulo dev" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 4:30:40 PM
> >> Subject: accumulo geo
> >> All,
> >>
> >> I would like to gauge the interest in an extension to Accumulo to
> >> enable
> >> geospatial capabilities. Currently, I have developed a schema for
> >> storing
> >> raster data as tiles in Accumulo and a plugin to Geoserver that allows
> >> Accumulo tables that use the specified schema to be exposed as WMS
> >> layers
> >> for importing into a GIS. This is a natural fit for Accumulo since the
> >> individual tiles are not large but the aggregate set of tiles that
> >> make up
> >> a single layer can become very large. Accumulo packages those tiles
> >> into
> >> blocks and distributes them around the cloud for quick access and
> >> redundant
> >> storage. The implementation is in an early state.
> >>
> >> I am currently investigating the feasibility of implementing an API
> >> for
> >> storing, querying, and processing vector data in Accumulo. I would
> >> like
> >> the API to be able to answer nearest neighbor queries, perform

On Tuesday, November 1, 2011 9:51:46 AM, "Anthony Fox" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm fine with whatever guidelines you all put together regarding
> contribs. My plugin is built against an older version of Accumulo so
> will need to be ported to the latest version. Initially, I'm just
> inquiring into whether anyone has interest in geo related
> functionality
> and has thought about an architecture for providing that kind of API.

I imagine people would be interested.  At the last BigDataCamp I attended, there was an entire breakout session about geo for various key/value stores.

I haven't really thought about how such a project would interface with Accumulo.  This may be one of those "if you build it they will come" situations.

Billie

I like Todd's suggestion of maintaining them on github. Until they have
shown that people are actively using and maintaining the project, its hard
to justify adding it to the official svn. Once it goes in, it becomes a
much big issue to remove it.

However, once they can show there is 'good' community support around the
contrib project, I don't see a reason why we couldn't include it as another
maven module. I also like the idea of having different profiles for
each/multiple contribs so when people want to build a distro of accumulo
with contribs X, Y, and Z they can do it from source with one command.

Just my two cents.

-- Jesse
-------------------
Jesse Yates
240-888-2200
@jesse_yates
On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Billie J Rinaldi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On Tuesday, November 1, 2011 9:51:46 AM, "Anthony Fox" <
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I'm fine with whatever guidelines you all put together regarding
> > contribs. My plugin is built against an older version of Accumulo so
> > will need to be ported to the latest version. Initially, I'm just
> > inquiring into whether anyone has interest in geo related
> > functionality
> > and has thought about an architecture for providing that kind of API.
>
> I imagine people would be interested.  At the last BigDataCamp I attended,
> there was an entire breakout session about geo for various key/value stores.
>
> I haven't really thought about how such a project would interface with
> Accumulo.  This may be one of those "if you build it they will come"
> situations.
>
> Billie
>