How does OPDi compliance affect upstream projects? | #HS16SJ
by Brittany Greaner | Jul 2, 2016

What if you could open your market up with considerably little engineering effort? It’s happening with ODPi (Open Data Platform initiative) compliance, according to John Mertic, director of Program Management for ODPi and Open Mainframe Project at The Linux Foundation.

ODPi is a nonprofit organization accelerating the open ecosystem of Big Data solutions, and this is the first year the organization has really seen market acceptance of what it’s doing, according to Mertic. It has just announced that Apache Hadoop distributions products from Altiscale, ArenaData, Hortonworks, IBM and Infosys are now ODPi Runtime Compliant.

This ensures that their distributions provide Big Data application vendors a consistent set of base-level expectations as defined by ODPi Runtime specification, without fighting an uphill battle.
“Companies are putting their engineering dollars behind ensuring alignment with this standard. It’s a huge step in this ecosystem,” said Mertic, who spoke to John Furrier (@furrier), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Hadoop Summit in San Jose, CA.

Fixing the bleeding edge

The bleeding edge is a big problem for many enterprises that want to take this into real-life production. When they encounter a distro, they want to have a known target and be prepared. This means knowing what to expect and having certain things that are always there.

But innovation will still continue, and it’s really helping upstream projects, Mertic emphasized. “Our certifications are getting input from vendors of ‘What are you using out of this?’ ‘What are the key interfaces?’ A lot of the time, upstream projects don’t know,” he said.

Their system helps discover these answers and prevent the APIs developers depend on from breaking when new versions are released. Oftentimes it’s not what’s on the front end that breaks, but the things that are supposed to be stable because no one’s performing maintenance.

The future of Linux

As for the future, there are tons of collaborative projects in the works, and lots of excitement surrounds Linux’s booth and sessions at the Summit. Mertic said he only has to ask one question: “Is multi-distribution support a challenge for you?” And the resounding answer is yes, followed by “Where do I sign up?”

ODPi is hoping for new members from the conference, or even just people participating in the community. “And that’s what we’re really about,” said Mertic. “How can we get this voice together and help make Hadoop easier for everyone?”

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