Status of the project?

[pfalcon]

The project looks interesting, but 10 commits over 2 years doesn't give high hopes. Was it just open-sourced recently? Is it still "ongoing research support by ..."? What's working currently, what's not, what's roadmap? All in all, if it's a typical student project being "open-sourced" a year or so after graduation, of the feeling of nostalgia, before former student completely dissolves in real-life (exciting things like paying bills, work, family, little kids), please tell so, to set everyone's expectations right ;-).

[graemedouglas]

Hi @pfalcon

This project was open-sourced after a paper was written a couple of years ago: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2554891

My interest in the project has not decreased, and some work has been done privately. I have new code to push once tested better, but my life has been very busy in the past months (I know this is not a good excuse, but true nonetheless). The last two years have also been spent working on IonDB, https://github.com/iondbproject/iondb which was designed and implemented by me and a couple others in part to address some weakness in LittleD.

In terms of roadmap, well there is a lot in the air. I am still figuring out my career focus but graduate studies holds a lot of interest, especially on this topic. I am sort of in a transitory time right now trying to make some cash ATM, so not much time has been spent except for a few days a week splitting between this and IonDB during the summers.

In terms of what works, more or less SELECT-FROM-WHERE, CREATE TABLE, INSERT, in short. INT and fixed STRING(n) types. Very limited indexing. Soon pushing work on query compiling/serialization, depending on results of latest submitted paper.

In terms of a rough roadmap, I would like to attempt what I think of as "query registration" which kind of blends the power of ad-hoc query specification with query compilation. Hopefully will integrate IonDB for better indexing/storage. Add support for sorting, aggregation, grouping, etc. Of course, this all depends on my future, though others at UBC are interested in continuing this project on.

Thanks for your interest, and hopefully this answers your questions, at least at a high level. We'll see what the future holds indeed.

[pfalcon]

@graemedouglas : I much appreciate the detailed response. The references are also very insightful - I watch the embedded databases space, and can't believe I missed so cool things. They also help to understand motivation and design choices behind LittleD.

So, I wish LittleD project to develop further and be very successful. Of course, for open source, that depends not only on project maintainers, but on community and contributors, so making it easier for them to get acquainted with the project is helpful (and was a topic of my tickets). So, I'd suggest to at least keep this ticket open, so it was easy to discover, if not make gradual changes here and there with the above aim.

I also posted link on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10621337 in the hope to bring more attention to the project.

[pfalcon]

I also posted link on HackerNews

It worked (doesn't work every time, you know ;-) ) - you now have 10x times more stars and will get more. Which of course shows that people care. So, please kindly use that as a motivation to make project more friendlier and easier to start with - it shouldn't take much effort, and you can be back to real life stuff, while in the meantime community will build up around your project, to help in future achieve your dreams for it. Thanks.

[graemedouglas]

I owe you a lot of thanks @pfalcon. I hope I didn't come off too strong! :)

[kupleva]

Hi @graemedouglas ,

I am now choosing between projects that I might be interested and able to contribute to. LittleD and IonDB grabbed my attention. I am primarily interested in IoT-related projects as I feel this is the future. I think as the world is facing the IoT and Big Data era it is a good idea to have tools for storing and retrieving huge arrays of data within a constrained physical system. In this respect your projects seem to be a way forward.

Just like you, I am experiencing a difficult period in my life career-wise. It is a bit difficult in nature, however. I am moving to another country and am forced to find a job there. The point I am trying to make by this is that it is difficult for me to estimate when I will be available to contribute. Anyway, I will be watching the projects to have an idea what's going on here.

Apologies if you feel my post falls into a different discussion topic.

All the best, Andrew

[graemedouglas]

Hi Andrew,

I totally understand. I sincerely wish you the best of luck whilst moving countries! Hopefully you find a good job, and if/when you want to contribute, just let me know! Maybe I'll open an issue for contributors discussion (until I figure out a better way).

[tima-m]

Hello @graemedouglas,

I read your recently published paper, "Efficient SQL Querying on Embedded Devices using Pre-Compilation". In this paper you implemented a compiler-separated version of LittleD. I'm very interested in it but it seems that the feature is not released yet.

Please comment your plan for releasing the improved version. I'd like to try once it is released. Thanks.

[graemedouglas]

Hello @tima-m,

I have the code in a separate repository, and it is ready to be pushed, I am just a little back-logged with paid work and my non-professional life to move it over. I will try and find some time soon to make the code public one way or another.