[this announcement is available online at https://s.apache.org/18vob ]
Open Source universal data interchange implementation of the Data Format
Description Language (DFDL) standard in use at DARPA, GE Research, Naval
Postgraduate School, Owl Cyber Defense, Perspecta Labs, and Raytheon BBN
Technologies, among others.
Wilmington, DE —4 March 2021— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the
all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source
projects and initiatives, announced today Apache® Daffodil™ as a Top-Level
Project (TLP).
Apache Daffodil is an Open Source implementation of the Data Format Description
Language 1.0 specification (DFDL; the Open Grid Forum open standard framework
for describing the attributes of any data format [1]) to enable universal data
interchange. The project was first created at the University of Illinois
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 2009, and entered the
Apache Incubator in August 2017.
"We’re extremely excited that Apache Daffodil has achieved this important
milestone in its development. The Daffodil DFDL implementation is a game
changer in complex text and binary data interfaces and creates massive
opportunities for organizations to easily implement highly sophisticated
processes like data decomposition, inspection, and reassembly," said Michael
Beckerle, Vice President of Apache Daffodil. "Instead of spending a lot of time
worrying about how to deal with so many kinds of data that you need to take in,
from day one you can convert all sorts of data into XML, or JSON, or your
preferred data structure, and convert back if you need to write data out in its
original format."
Apache Daffodil is particularly useful in large-scale organizations, such as
governments and large corporations, where massive amounts of complex and legacy
data must be exchanged and made accessible every day. Daffodil is also
particularly useful in cybersecurity, where data must be inspected for
correctness and sanitized.
Apache Daffodil is in use at major global organizations that include DARPA, GE
Research, Naval Postgraduate School, Owl Cyber Defense, Perspecta Labs, and
Raytheon BBN Technologies, among others.
"We are using Daffodil to translate DFDL schema specifications into code for
our Monitoring & INspection Device (MIND) as part of our work on DARPA’s
Guaranteed Architecture for Physical Security (GAPS) program," said said Bill
Smith, Principal Engineer at GE Research. "One of our engineers has joined the
Apache Daffodil Project Management Committee and is building out the new
DFDL-to-C backend on a dedicated Daffodil development branch. We are now
translating DFDL schemas provided by other DARPA GAPS performers to C code
suitable for the small resource-constrained controllers in our MIND device.
When complete, Daffodil’s DFDL-to-C backend will give us the ability to
annotate DFDL schemas with security policies and rapidly reconfigure our MIND
device for different mission security profiles."
"Apache Daffodil is an important asset to our cross domain solutions technology
stack, allowing Owl to support our customers by extending our filtering
capabilities to new data types faster and with less risk," said Ken Walker, CTO
at Owl Cyber Defense. "It’s directly in line with our company priorities, as
supporters of the Open Source community, and highly beneficial to our product
lines to have this high-quality Open Source implementation of DFDL to support
challenging, sometimes proprietary data formats, such as Link16, VMF, USMTF,
OSIsoft PI System, and JANAP-128, without the need to develop additional
software. DFDL enables our Raise-the-Bar compliant cross domain solutions to
support new data types without additional rounds of lengthy lab-based testing
and recertification."
"The DFDL open spec and the Apache Daffodil implementation have helped us
tremendously in parsing and transforming fixed-format data in a variety of
different R projects at BBN," said Michael Atighetchi, Lead Scientist at
Raytheon BBN Technologies. "Sharing parsers through a vendor-neutral XML
representation is a game changer that enables a significant speedup in
developing, maturing, and transitioning advanced capabilities to help war
fighters."
"Our research on applying Data Format Description Language (DFDL) is exploring
how to unlock and archive a plethora of diverse data streams from unmanned
systems," said Don Brutzman, Naval Postgraduate School. "Both the DFDL standard
and the Apache Daffodil open-source implementation provide a big benefit for
these potential capabilities. Continuing work at Naval Postgraduate School
(NPS) Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research
(CRUSER) hopes to make telemetry from field experimentation and simulation
repeatably tractable for Big Data analytics."
"Graduation to a TLP recognizes that the Apache Daffodil project follows the
rigorous software
