VXQuery status (Was: [Incubator Wiki] Update of "April2012" by TillWestmann)

[Jukka Zitting <ju...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Thanks for the report, VXQuery!

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Apache Wiki <wi...@apache.org> wrote:
> + * change of the focus of the project (the previous focus was to be
> +   flexible wrt the representation of the data model, the new focus
> +   is parallel processing of large amounts of XML data)
> + * re-newed development activity

I see a single "VXQuery focus" thread on vxquery-dev@ and a handful of
related commits, but the activity on those seems rather to decline
than increase over time.

So looking at the project from the outside it unfortunately doesn't
seem like the new focus is yet helping re-activate the project. Do you
expect this to change over the next few months? Does VXQuery have
concrete plans on how to drive the new focus forward? If yes, is help
from the larger Incubator community or ComDev needed?

> + * 2 proposals for GSoC (1 person expressed interest in working on
> +   VXQuery for GSoC)

I'm concerned about starting a GSoC project on a codebase without an
active community. GSoC students are supposed to be working with the
community, not *be* the community. Have you talked about this with
ComDev?

PS. VXQuery has four mentors listed: Paul Fremantle, Sanjiva
Weerawarana, Radu Preotiuc-Pietro, and Jochen Wiedmann. I only see
Jochen interacting with the community on vxquery-dev@ over the past
two years. Are the other mentors still actively following the project?

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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Re: VXQuery status (Was: [Incubator Wiki] Update of "April2012" by TillWestmann)

[Jukka Zitting <ju...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 12:52 AM, Vinayak Borkar <vb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> We in the VXQuery trenches need some help with growing the community. We
> understand the technical aspects of implementing the XQuery engine, but need
> some guidance with community building.

It seems like you're lacking active mentors. Any volunteers to help VXQuery?

> My day-job is at a university where I meet students with various interests.
> The GSoC project proposals were done with the aim of using students for the
> summer (with funding by Google through GSoC), to work on bootstrapping the
> VXQuery project so it gets into a functional state.

OK. A big part of GSoC is giving students a chance to interact and
work with an open source community, so I think it would be good if
there was at least some ongoing activity beyond or in addition to the
GSoC projects.

ComDev people, is there anything you think you could/should do to help
VXQuery on this?

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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Re: VXQuery status (Was: [Incubator Wiki] Update of "April2012" by TillWestmann)

[Vinayak Borkar <vb...@yahoo.com>]

Hi Jukka,


We in the VXQuery trenches need some help with growing the community. We 
understand the technical aspects of implementing the XQuery engine, but 
need some guidance with community building.

With respect to the system we are in a catch-22 situation. We feel that 
some part of the system needs to exist and work before we can bring 
on-board a community and we are not quite there. At the same time, we 
need pairs of hands to help build out that core part of the system that 
will attract a community.

I do believe that the new focus on big-data will indeed attract a 
community once we have something up and running.

On other issue is that the committers of VXQuery are working on this 
project out of personal interest and have no agency that is funding its 
development. As a result, we work on this after our day jobs and so 
progress is slow.

My day-job is at a university where I meet students with various 
interests. The GSoC project proposals were done with the aim of using 
students for the summer (with funding by Google through GSoC), to work 
on bootstrapping the VXQuery project so it gets into a functional state.

I do agree that GSoC is not our method to grow a community.


Please advise.

Thanks,
Vinayak


On 4/2/12 5:30 AM, Jukka Zitting wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the report, VXQuery!
>
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Apache Wiki<wi...@apache.org>  wrote:
>> + * change of the focus of the project (the previous focus was to be
>> +   flexible wrt the representation of the data model, the new focus
>> +   is parallel processing of large amounts of XML data)
>> + * re-newed development activity
>
> I see a single "VXQuery focus" thread on vxquery-dev@ and a handful of
> related commits, but the activity on those seems rather to decline
> than increase over time.
>
> So looking at the project from the outside it unfortunately doesn't
> seem like the new focus is yet helping re-activate the project. Do you
> expect this to change over the next few months? Does VXQuery have
> concrete plans on how to drive the new focus forward? If yes, is help
> from the larger Incubator community or ComDev needed?
>
>> + * 2 proposals for GSoC (1 person expressed interest in working on
>> +   VXQuery for GSoC)
>
> I'm concerned about starting a GSoC project on a codebase without an
> active community. GSoC students are supposed to be working with the
> community, not *be* the community. Have you talked about this with
> ComDev?
>
> PS. VXQuery has four mentors listed: Paul Fremantle, Sanjiva
> Weerawarana, Radu Preotiuc-Pietro, and Jochen Wiedmann. I only see
> Jochen interacting with the community on vxquery-dev@ over the past
> two years. Are the other mentors still actively following the project?
>
> BR,
>
> Jukka Zitting
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
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>


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