nealrichardson commented on a change in pull request #63: URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow-site/pull/63#discussion_r460204935
########## File path: faq.md ########## @@ -24,32 +24,160 @@ limitations under the License. # Frequently Asked Questions +## General + +### What *is* Arrow? + +Arrow is an open standard for how to represent columnar data in memory, along +with libraries in many languages that implement that standard. The Arrow format +allows different programs and runtimes, perhaps written in different languages, +to share data efficiently using a set of rich data types (included nested +and user-defined data types). The Arrow libraries make it easy to write such +programs, by sparing the programmer from implementing low-level details of the +Arrow format. + +Arrow additionally defines a streaming format and a file format for +inter-process communication (IPC), based on the in-memory format. It also +defines a generic client-server RPC mechanism (Flight RPC), based on the +IPC format, and implemented on top of the gRPC framework. <!-- TODO links --> + +### Why create a new standard? + +<!-- Fill this in --> + +## Project status + ### How stable is the Arrow format? Is it safe to use in my application? +<!-- Revise this --> + +The Arrow *in-memory format* is considered stable, and we intend to make only +backwards-compatible changes, such as additional data types. It is used by +many applications already, and you can trust that compatibility will not be +broken. + +The Arrow *file format* (based on the Arrow IPC mechanism) is not recommended +for long-term disk persistence of data; that said, it is perfectly acceptable +to write Arrow memory to disk for purposes of memory mapping and caching. + +We encourage people to start building Arrow-based in-memory computing +applications now, and choose a suitable file format for disk storage +if necessary. The Arrow libraries include adapters for several file formats, +including Parquet, ORC, CSV, and JSON. + +### How stable are the Arrow libraries? + +Some implementations of Arrow are more complete and more stable than others. +We refer you to the [implementation matrix](https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/master/docs/source/status.rst). Review comment: I've done this. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This is an automated message from the Apache Git Service. To respond to the message, please log on to GitHub and use the URL above to go to the specific comment. For queries about this service, please contact Infrastructure at: us...@infra.apache.org
