I also worked on the protobuf interface for a little while, although not for as long as some of the other folks commenting. I'm ok with removing it. I do see some value in leaving stalled/incomplete projects around as bait for future developers to pick up - that seems to have worked for redis ;) But if it is a maintenance burden lets drop it from develop. Someone can always pick it up from the history.
If I recall correctly, one of the big incomplete parts of the project is that we hadn't figured out how to serialize user objects efficiently with this protocol. The default was to convert PDX objects to JSON. That was about as efficient as the existing REST protocol, which also uses json. -Dan ________________________________ From: Mike Martell <marte...@vmware.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 4:53 PM To: dev@geode.apache.org <dev@geode.apache.org> Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] removal of experimental Protobuf client/server interface As the only remaining member on the CSharpDriver team, I too have an attachment to Protobuf. It’s purely technical, however, not emotional. I was truly excited about the prospects of a self-describing protocol and had hopes for a .NET client talking directly to geode without going through the C++ layer. The performance I measured doing puts/gets of a broad range of object sizes was at parity with the C++ client. I was truly surprised to see the project shelved. But I do understand we had extremely limited functionality not even close to an MVP. In hindsight, we should have put all the resources on the server side, as the client implementation was almost trivial. Mike --- Sent from Workspace ONE Boxer<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwhatisworkspaceone.com%2Fboxer&data=04%7C01%7Cdasmith%40vmware.com%7Cca1e125312f04410683308d8ee56df12%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C637521404171884664%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=9KAV3y0fxNQ9MiNxYd9af8ZZihuIUBWcbFLGS%2FGIxqM%3D&reserved=0> On March 23, 2021 at 3:55:33 PM PDT, Udo Kohlmeyer <u...@vmware.com> wrote: Alexander, as you know, the intent for this work was to lower the barrier of entry, as the Geode wire protocol is not documented, which makes it impossible to contribute any clients in other languages to the project. The lack of documentation of this feature did also not help the case. If no-one else sees ANY benefit of having a self-describing wire protocol as part of the project, then you should remove it. But as stated, without AND documentation pertaining to the wire protocol for Geode, removing the only self-describing protocol with serialization, adopted by many globally, will put the barrier of entry of contributing to Geode, outside of Java and C++/C# even higher. In addition, I'm sure that the contributors to the C++/C# client could actually benefit in using this protocol. But I am just a single voice. --Udo On 3/24/21, 9:38 AM, "Alexander Murmann" <amurm...@vmware.com> wrote: Udo, having worked on Protobuf with you, I share the emotional attachment. I also agree that it's a valuable feature to have and that ideally someone would pick it up. I don't think it's feature complete enough at this point to be viable. Unlike with Redis, I haven't seen anyone in the community contribute to it in a long time. If you or someone else were to volunteer to do all the work you propose we do on Protobuf, I'd strongly support keeping it. I think each of the other feature areas you propose as potential removal candidates deserve their own dedicated discussion. I understand some of them are harder to remove from a technical perspective or neither experimental nor deprecated and would thus require a Geode 2.0. ________________________________ From: Udo Kohlmeyer <u...@vmware.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2021 14:54 To: dev@geode.apache.org <dev@geode.apache.org> Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] removal of experimental Protobuf client/server interface -1 Given that I was on the team that started this initiative, I will naturally have an inclination to say 'No'. I don't know if I would go as far as removing this project/initiative out of Geode. I understand that the way that was used to hook into Geode was less the perfect, and I fully support removing those and possibly replacing them with viable alternatives, if that makes the core Geode project better. What I don't support is the removal of the code completely on the basis that it isn't used by anyone (we have no proof either direction). I think that the addition of this adapter is beneficial to the Geode. Given that lack of documentation relating to the Geode wire protocol, the barrier of entry for anyone else to connect to Geode is HUGE. The Protobuf initiative was the effort to lower the bar of entry for other languages to be able to talk to Geode. But by removing it, we make Geode less accessible. I think the lack of focus on this effort can also attribute to the lack of use. As @Dave pointed out, there is little to no documentation impact for the adapter. Which means, we (Geode) have failed at marketing this feature. I propose that the Protobuf adapter NOT to be removed, but rather reworked so that it fits more in line with our other extensions like Redis and Memcache. Yes, we would have to maintain the code, but it is not like we haven't been doing this with the Memcache or Redis extension for a MUCH longer period than what we have for Protobuf. If we keep Protobuf, we need promote it, so we should document this adapter. Alternatively, if we remove Protobuf, we put effort into documented our wire protocol, so that Geode wire protocol is not a closed box and a HUGE barrier for anyone wanting to connect to Geode. If we vote to permanently remove the Protobuf from Geode, I want to suggest that we put to vote the removal of many other projects in Geode on the basis of lack of adoption: * Geode-Rebalancer * Geode-Memcache * Geode-Connector * Geode-Redis * Geode Offheap These are projects that we maintain without any (known) users actively using these features. --Udo On 3/24/21, 2:16 AM, "Bruce Schuchardt" <bru...@vmware.com> wrote: Hi folks, We’ve had an experimental client/server interface in Geode that no-one to my knowledge is using. We’re testing it with every build and are having to make changes to it to keep it up to date with the rest of the project. The last change of substance to the geode-protobuf sub-project, for instance, was in 2018 but that’s been followed by many incidental commits. GEM-8997<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fissues.apache.org%2Fjira%2Fbrowse%2FGEODE-8997&data=04%7C01%7Cdasmith%40vmware.com%7Cca1e125312f04410683308d8ee56df12%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C637521404171894659%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=ozHkvuA8gktha%2B10hNSWRqRcLGrgwRAtF86frcWzBkU%3D&reserved=0> was opened to have the sub-projects for this interface removed. I’ve prepared a pull request<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fapache%2Fgeode%2Fpull%2F6168&data=04%7C01%7Cdasmith%40vmware.com%7Cca1e125312f04410683308d8ee56df12%7Cb39138ca3cee4b4aa4d6cd83d9dd62f0%7C0%7C0%7C637521404171894659%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=Ip4QtGedu0yRJxS9xxYsq7IElCI5qbmcLcgt6%2Bv4FAA%3D&reserved=0> to remove it and would like to get consensus to move forward with that effort.
