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Apache Superset

superset.apache.org

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Re: Apache Superset

#71
post #34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apache foundation is way larger than just the server

Yes, I agree. However a lot of their forward facing projects seem to be effective abandon-ware (few people interested in contributing, competing more popular solutions based on forks, or just no longer relevant). These projects don't give the apache foundation an appearance of importance or relevance, rather they make it look rather rundown.

That's how open-source abandonware is supposed to work though: the idea is that whenever a (for-profit) company produces something that it can't afford to run anymore but also can't afford to shut-down and damage their customer relationships, then they'll open-source the project and give it to an open-source foundation for stewardship and repo hosting. Yes, it's where software goes-to-die-a-long-death, but it also gives some people hope, and the possibility of giving it a new life in future. Currently, the Apache Foundation is the go-to place for that, and it benefits everyone considering the alternatives are worse.

Obivously the main "alternative" is for the original company to simply shut down the product/service, which can do irreperable harm to a company when they have high-profile customers who are utterly dependent on a service.

Another alternative is to use an open-source foundation that's directly managed by the original company, which is what Microsoft did with its DotNet Foundation ( https://dotnetfoundation.org/ ) - and while Microsoft's legal team ensures the foundation is "legally" independent, in practice we know all the significant shots are being called from within Microsoft-proper; but it does give us some modest reassurances that .NET won't suddenly return to being closed-source overnight.

Another alternative is to not open-source it and to instead sell it off to another company that can maintain it while still being profitable - this is what Adobe did with Flash: they sold it all off to Samsung because their Harman division wanted to continue using Flash for embedded/automotive UX work. This approach can work, but doesn't benefit the wider ecosystem the way that open-sourcing does - and something something shareholder value and return-on-investment by selling rather than writing-it-off...

What companies won't do is let any of their engs that are passionate about a project split-off from the company to run and maintain it, le sigh.

Re: Apache Superset

#72
post #34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apache foundation is way larger than just the server

Yes, I agree. However a lot of their forward facing projects seem to be effective abandon-ware (few people interested in contributing, competing more popular solutions based on forks, or just no longer relevant). These projects don't give the apache foundation an appearance of importance or relevance, rather they make it look rather rundown.

I would consider Airflow, Spark and Flink to be their forward facing projects, and they are all very actively developed.

Re: Apache Superset

#73
post #40

I wish more projects had guided tour videos that demonstrated the power of the tool in the hands of an expert user. Not "get started" but "why should I care". Wes McKinney used to have an excellent 5 minute introduction to pandas in this genre.

This might be what you're looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGfUIOK87V8

I saw that video on the website. It isn't narrated or captioned as to what the users is trying to accomplish

Re: Apache Superset

#75
post #3

This looks like grafana, right? Why would I use this instead of grafana?

They're both washboarding apps, and while I'm sure they each have panel types the other doesn't yet support, I don't think that's intrinsic. The differentiation as I see it, is that Superset is designed to craft SQL queries and visualize the results. The query builder is probably where this shows the most.

To make it more concrete -- coworkers tell me Grafana doesn't work so well with Apache Druid, while Superset supports it quite well.

Re: Apache Superset

#76
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the list: https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?name OpenOffice is probably the most famous (it still has the name, but it is dead, LibreOffice is the real "active" fork). And the things in the "Attic" are officially dead - https://projects.apache.org/committee.html?attic and many more projects should be there.

I think it's a great feature to have explicit lifecycle for open source projects. Lots of other projects just die silently and/or you are unsure of the status. Here you at least have a chance to revive them if you like as there is always an overarching organisation.

The problem really is that some Apache projects are actually alive (Apache itself, apparently Superset, Groovy, etc) and some appear alive at first glance.

More things should move into the Attic, like OpenOffice.

Re: Apache Superset

#77

So it's irritating to me that this is ranking #1 on HN (why is it, btw?) I just pulled the trigger on a large data gathering project using Metabase, and feel a bit hampered by the limitations in terms of charts and plugins... but I considered Superset first, and after a lot of thought I decided that almost everything I've ever worked with that was run by the Apache foundation turned out to be semi-abandoned disasterw…

I used Metabase at my last gig (CTO @ e-commerce, 30+ users) and it was well-received and dare I say even a bit adored. It was the only self-hosted tool I'd receive after-hours text messages about going down that someone urgently needed back up for some task due tomorrow.

Business users loved the self-serve query builder, and it wasn't uncommon to walk around the office and see Metabase up on someones screen. My CEO absolutely loved it, and used it daily including to put together data for board decks.

None of my users cared about visualizations, and lived in tabular data. This included finance, marketing, merchandising, operations, and executives (CEO/COO/CFO). The only people that lamented the limited visualization were analysts. Power users did all their day-to-day work in Excel or other tools anyway, such as managing marketing spend or inventory allocations.

Metabase was great for dashboards and self-service (ad-hoc). 10/10 would deploy again.

Re: Apache Superset

#78
One thing to keep in mind with BI software is that the users are often very different than, well, those individuals that prefer to use mutt as an email client.

Many, or most, users for a BI tool will be operations, product managers, and business management who simply will not find the interface to be intuitive, responsive, or well designed. At least that's my experience.

Re: Apache Superset

#79

Had a very good experience with Superset. Superset allowed us to replace Tableau and not looking back Took me a while figure out how to embed it into my app using Superset Embedded SDK. Superset Embedded SDK - "Embedded SDK allows you to embed dashboards from Superset into your own app, using your app's authentication. Embedding is done by inserting an iframe, containing a Superset page, into the host application." h…

How do you deal with data visibility and permissions? I mean, most tables have data that should only be seen by a specific user or group ID, and that layer is usually handled by the application. It would be awesome to expose the power of Superset for users, but I imagine creating the security layer would be a pain.

Re: Apache Superset

#80

So it's irritating to me that this is ranking #1 on HN (why is it, btw?) I just pulled the trigger on a large data gathering project using Metabase, and feel a bit hampered by the limitations in terms of charts and plugins... but I considered Superset first, and after a lot of thought I decided that almost everything I've ever worked with that was run by the Apache foundation turned out to be semi-abandoned disasterw…

Apache Software Foundation is just an umbrella organization to keep things on life support till someone can apply sufficient motive force to resurrect. I think that's really valuable. Lots of projects there have had that effort applied to them and kept going.
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