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A programmer friend and I had a running joke that it was impossible to work out what any given Apache project actually does.

crancher 3y ago
"OpenDAL is a data access layer that allows users to easily and efficiently retrieve data from various storage services in a unified way." Generally agree, but this one seems clear enough.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  The quote by itself is so generic it's useless. That's my peeve with marketing advice this day. Describing what the product will do for user in emotional/vague terms carries zero information relevant to evaluate the product and make a use/purchase decision. It's either treating the customer as a generic unsophisticated idiot, that can't understand what the product actually does, and just needs to be told it'll make them happy, or it's a pure manipulative play. Either way, this is not the style OSS projects should pick up.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    >The quote by itself is so generic it's useless. to me it means - you will be able to write code that allows you to save and retrieve data from various online services that offer data storage without having to know the particulars of each one of those services apis. Is this what it does? And if so I wouldn't think that was useless information, at least it is useful enough for me to determine should I Read on?
    - Kinrany 3y ago
      It is accurate but not concise. The explanation should start with the purpose of the project described in about one sentence, then elaborate by adding context that may or may not be known to the reader.
      - xuanwo 3y ago
        Could you offer some guidance? This slogan is the clearest explanation I've come across. I'm open to better suggestions! Thanks in advance.
        Kinrany 3y ago
        I linked the overview page because the image on it explains the project better than any description I could find. One of the issues I see is mixing "what" and "why". The "what": an abstraction for accessing object storage services, implemented as client libraries in multiple languages plus utilities built on top. The "why", the problem to be solved: there are many services that provide key-value storage with values being possibly very large; it is reasonable to want to write code that works with any of these services but there is no common interface to write this code against. Caveat, I may very well be misunderstanding the project. Questions I have: - how does it compare to object_store - what is the philosophy of the project; in what way is it opinionated about the design of object storage services
        fatherzine 3y ago
        the slogan is generic enough to cover anything from curl to jdbc. be more specific.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I think the quote seems to describe the project well. It sounds generic because it does a generic thing.
- cybrox 3y ago
  I does seem clear enough but I don't think the marketingy vague description does its actual functionality justice here.
speedgoose 3y ago
I agree it took me some time to understand what it does. It seems to be a Rust library/crate allowing filesystem like operations on many storage systems, as long as you can do basic key/values things. From your filesystem, to redis, S3, sqlite, etcd… They also provide Python and NodeJS bindings. The operations are apparently (not supported by all storage systems): stat read write create_dir delete copy rename list scan presign blocking
tison 3y ago
It's hard to me ever on OpenDAL also. But now I have an image that you can use it either as: 1. A drop-in replacement to S3 SDK (AWS's Rust SDK is ...); 2. A quick way to support your users to configure different cloud storage they have (release you from supporting multiple cloud OSS backends with different SDKs). A few increasing DB projects use OpenDAL in the second way, like Databend, GreptimeDB, QuestDB, RisingWave, etc.
- wey-gu 3y ago
  So does project like Mozilla sccache. - https://github.com/mozilla/sccache https://github.com/mozilla/sccache
deleted 3y ago
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crancher 3y ago

"OpenDAL is a data access layer that allows users to easily and efficiently retrieve data from various storage services in a unified way." Generally agree, but this one seems clear enough.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
The quote by itself is so generic it's useless. That's my peeve with marketing advice this day. Describing what the product will do for user in emotional/vague terms carries zero information relevant to evaluate the product and make a use/purchase decision. It's either treating the customer as a generic unsophisticated idiot, that can't understand what the product actually does, and just needs to be told it'll make them happy, or it's a pure manipulative play. Either way, this is not the style OSS projects should pick up.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  >The quote by itself is so generic it's useless. to me it means - you will be able to write code that allows you to save and retrieve data from various online services that offer data storage without having to know the particulars of each one of those services apis. Is this what it does? And if so I wouldn't think that was useless information, at least it is useful enough for me to determine should I Read on?
  - Kinrany 3y ago
    It is accurate but not concise. The explanation should start with the purpose of the project described in about one sentence, then elaborate by adding context that may or may not be known to the reader.
    - xuanwo 3y ago
      Could you offer some guidance? This slogan is the clearest explanation I've come across. I'm open to better suggestions! Thanks in advance.
      - Kinrany 3y ago
        I linked the overview page because the image on it explains the project better than any description I could find. One of the issues I see is mixing "what" and "why". The "what": an abstraction for accessing object storage services, implemented as client libraries in multiple languages plus utilities built on top. The "why", the problem to be solved: there are many services that provide key-value storage with values being possibly very large; it is reasonable to want to write code that works with any of these services but there is no common interface to write this code against. Caveat, I may very well be misunderstanding the project. Questions I have: - how does it compare to object_store - what is the philosophy of the project; in what way is it opinionated about the design of object storage services
      - fatherzine 3y ago
        the slogan is generic enough to cover anything from curl to jdbc. be more specific.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I think the quote seems to describe the project well. It sounds generic because it does a generic thing.
cybrox 3y ago
I does seem clear enough but I don't think the marketingy vague description does its actual functionality justice here.

speedgoose 3y ago

I agree it took me some time to understand what it does. It seems to be a Rust library/crate allowing filesystem like operations on many storage systems, as long as you can do basic key/values things. From your filesystem, to redis, S3, sqlite, etcd… They also provide Python and NodeJS bindings. The operations are apparently (not supported by all storage systems): stat read write create_dir delete copy rename list scan presign blocking

tison 3y ago

It's hard to me ever on OpenDAL also. But now I have an image that you can use it either as: 1. A drop-in replacement to S3 SDK (AWS's Rust SDK is ...); 2. A quick way to support your users to configure different cloud storage they have (release you from supporting multiple cloud OSS backends with different SDKs). A few increasing DB projects use OpenDAL in the second way, like Databend, GreptimeDB, QuestDB, RisingWave, etc.

wey-gu 3y ago
So does project like Mozilla sccache. - https://github.com/mozilla/sccache https://github.com/mozilla/sccache

deleted 3y ago

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