The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® Superset™ as a Top-Level Project

Open Source enterprise-grade Big Data visualization and business intelligence Web application in use at Airbnb, American Express, Dropbox, Lyft, Netflix, Nielsen, Rakuten Viki, Twitter, and Udemy, among others.

Wilmington, DE —21 January 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® Superset™ as a Top-Level Project (TLP).

Apache Superset is a modern, Open Source data exploration and visualization platform that  enables users to easily and quickly build and explore dashboards using its simple no-code visualization builder and state-of-the-art SQL editor. The project originated at Airbnb in 2015 and entered into the Apache Incubator program in May 2017.

“It’s been amazing to be an active part of growing a welcoming, diverse and engaged community over the past five years while following the ASF principles around inclusion, openness and collaboration,” said Maxime Beauchemin, Vice President of Apache Superset. “At the scale and level of diversity that the Superset project has achieved, it’s critical to have a solid governance model in place like the one prescribed by the ASF.”

Apache Superset v1.0
Superset helps streamline the analytics process by providing an intuitive interface to rapidly explore and visualize datasets, create interactive dashboards, and model real-time business intelligence insights at scale. The platform integrates with most SQL speaking data sources, including modern cloud-native databases, data warehouses, and engines at petabyte scale. 

The Project also celebrates a major milestone with the release of Apache Superset 1.0. Features include: 

  • Rich library of visualizations with support for integrating custom visualizations
  • Thin caching layer to optimize performance of charts and dashboards 
  • Code-free visualization builder
  • State-of-the-art SQL editor and metadata workflow
  • Extensible enterprise authentication and security model 
  • Easy-to-use, lightweight semantic layer
  • Notification alerts and scheduled reports

“Apache Superset 1.0 is a solid, mature, self-standing solution that fully solves business intelligence and data visualization needs for modern data teams,” added Beauchemin. “Superset not only covers the table stakes, but also offers guarantees, features and a fresh approach that existing BI solutions can’t match.”

Apache Superset is in use at Airbnb, American Express, Dropbox, Lyft, Netflix, Nielsen, Rakuten Viki, Twitter, and Udemy, among others. A list of known users is available at https://github.com/apache/superset/blob/master/INTHEWILD.md .

“Apache Superset helps Airbnb democratize data insights and make data-informed decisions,” said Jeff Feng, Product Lead at Airbnb and member of the Apache Superset Project Management Committee. “Superset uniquely connects SQL analysis with data exploration for thousands of our employees each week. It also serves as a flexible and reliable platform for visualizing metrics, helping executives and knowledge workers see and understand data.”

“We had an amazing journey with Superset at Dropbox,” said Chloe Wang, Senior Product Manager, Data Insights Platform at Dropbox. “Superset got introduced in 2019 and soon became the most widely adopted query engine within the analytical organization. As a result, our analysts are able to make timely and high confidence product decisions.”

“Before Superset, we were paying for a patchwork of proprietary tools and we kept running into limitations when it came to customizing charts and dashboards,” said Amit Miran, Software Team Lead for Media Application Framework group at Nielsen. “Once the Superset project supported adding of custom visualizations, that was the turning point for us at Nielsen to start adopting Superset in large projects. We’re very excited about native dashboard filters and future support for cross filtering, which will make our viz plugins even more powerful. The excitement for the project drove me to become involved in my first open source project.”

“Apache Superset is an amazing project that enables engineers to easily execute data analysis,” said Grace Guo, member of the Apache Superset Project Management Committee. “I have been a Superset user and a Superset builder for a few years. I run queries in SQL Lab, visualize data using one of the many supported chart types, and build dashboards, specifically focusing on performance and product adoption metrics. As an engineer, I appreciate the ability to contribute to the product. If I see some area to improve, or need a feature which doesn’t exist, I am happy to create a PR to fix it for myself and benefit other users.”

“Apache Superset’s strength lies in its community,” added Beauchemin. “We invite those interested in data visualization to join our mailing lists and help shape future versions of Superset.”

Learn more about the latest in v1.0 at the Apache Superset community global MeetUp on 28 January. Registration is open to all and free of charge https://s.apache.org/3cm4f 

Availability and Oversight
Apache Superset software is released under the Apache License v2.0 and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project’s day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. For downloads, documentation, and ways to become involved with Apache Superset, visit https://superset.apache.org/

About the Apache Incubator
The Apache Incubator is the primary entry path for projects and codebases wishing to become part of the efforts at The Apache Software Foundation. All code donations from external organizations and existing external projects enter the ASF through the Incubator to: 1) ensure all donations are in accordance with the ASF legal standards; and 2) develop new communities that adhere to our guiding principles. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF. For more information, visit http://incubator.apache.org/

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation is the world’s largest Open Source foundation, stewarding 227M+ lines of code and providing more than $20B+ worth of software to the public at 100% no cost. The ASF’s all-volunteer community grew from 21 original founders overseeing the Apache HTTP Server to 813 individual Members and 206 Project Management Committees who successfully lead 350+ Apache projects and initiatives in collaboration with nearly 8,000 Committers through the ASF’s meritocratic process known as “The Apache Way”. Apache software is integral to nearly every end user computing device, from laptops to tablets to mobile devices across enterprises and mission-critical applications. Apache projects power most of the Internet, manage exabytes of data, execute teraflops of operations, and store billions of objects in virtually every industry. The commercially-friendly and permissive Apache License v2 is an Open Source industry standard, helping launch billion dollar corporations and benefiting countless users worldwide. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services, Anonymous, Baidu, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cloudera, Comcast, Didi Chuxing, Facebook, Google, Handshake, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Pineapple Fund, Red Hat, Reprise Software, Target, Tencent, Union Investment, Verizon Media, and Workday. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF

© The Apache Software Foundation. “Apache”, “Superset”, “Apache Superset”, and “ApacheCon” are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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