LucidDB is the result of an ongoing effort by a number of different
organizations and individuals. It was started as a collaboration
between LucidEra, Inc. (a
software startup) and The Eigenbase Project (a
non-profit organization). Much of the technology was adapted from an
earlier venture (Broadbase Software, which produced the industry's
first turn-key data mart product). LucidEra acquired the rights to
this codebase, integrated it into the pluggable DBMS framework
provided by Eigenbase, and contributed the result (LucidDB) back to
Eigenbase as open-source software under the terms of the GPL. LucidEra
went out of business in June 2009, but Eigenbase sponsorship for the
community effort continues, providing project hosting resources such
as source control and release management; Eigenbase also oversees
coordination with related projects. Most recently, a new company
called Dynamo BI
has picked up the baton and is commercializing the technology under
the name DynamoDB; read the announcement on the
mailing list.
Is paid support or commercial (non-GPL) licensing available for
LucidDB?
Volunteer support is available through the users mailing list. Paid
support is available from Dynamo BI. Non-GPL licensing is
not currently available, but may be offered in the future. For
further questions about licensing, contact info@eigenbase.org.
Why not just use an existing open-source database such as MySQL?
Other open-source databases are great for transaction processing, but
very limited when it comes to advanced business intelligence
requirements. LucidDB is purpose-built for flexible, high-performance
analytics, including integrated ETL and OLAP capabilities, with very
little administration required.
How can I become a contributor?
There are many ways to contribute, including code, documentation,
testing, integration with other projects, and evangelism. If you like
to hack, you can start with using LucidDB's
extensibility features to create useful components such as
user-defined function libraries and data source connectivity plugins,
and then move on into deeper parts of the system if that's where your
interests lie. Before committer privileges can be granted to the
source control system, a standard contributor agreement is required by
The Eigenbase Project.