ASF Project Spotlight: Apache SeaTunnel  

Posted by The ASF Projects

Can you tell us a bit about the project?  
Apache SeaTunnel is a high-performance, distributed, massive data integration tool. The project was originally developed in 2017 and entered the ASF Incubator in December 2021 and became an ASF Top-Level Project in June 2023.

When was the project started and why? 
Originally named Waterdrop, Apache SeaTunnel was created in 2017, with the source code released on GitHub the same year.The main reason for developing SeaTunnel was the lack of good, user-friendly, open source software that supported the synchronization of hundreds of billions of data every day in the market at that time. SeaTunnel’s mission is to spread the capability of synchronizing massive data worldwide and significantly reduce the threshold for users to integrate data using technologies, like Apache Spark and Apache Flink.

Who is your audience, and what key features of the technology do you believe will excite people? 
SeaTunnel is built for data scientists, data engineers, data analysts, and data practitioners who need to combine data from different sources into a single, unified data store. It supports key features like multiple synchronization scenarios, including batch synchronization, real-time synchronization, and CDC synchronization. It also supports more than 130 data source synchronization, including transaction databases, big data databases, cloud databases, Software as a service (SaaS) , and MySQL Binary Log (BinLog), among others. Its support for SeaTunnel Zeta, a  community-developed computing engine,  makes it more efficient in data integration, and SeaTunnel’s web UI significantly lowers the barrier to entry  for non-technical personnel looking to join data management teams.

What technology problem is Apache SeaTunnel solving?
The emergence of SeaTunnel solves common problems in the field of data integration, such as incompatible versions caused by the diversity of data sources; complex data synchronization scenarios; high resource requirements; lack of data quality control and monitoring; complex technology stacks; and difficult management and maintenance.

Why is this work important?
SeaTunnel has established a unified data integration platform that features high reliability, centralized management, and visual monitoring. The platform enables standardized, regulated, and interface-based operations, ensuring high-speed data synchronization and seamless automatic switching from incremental to full updates without locking. Currently, it supports over 130 types of data sources, enabling whole database synchronization and automatic schema changes. The decentralized design guarantees a high availability mechanism for the system. Overall, SeaTunnel is easy-to-use and out-of-the-box ready, providing users with an irreplaceable and powerful open-source software solution for data synchronization and integration.

The ASF’s mission is to provide software for the public good. In what ways does your project embody the ASF mission and “community over code” ethos?
SeaTunnel exemplifies the ASF’s mission by fostering an open and collaborative environment that actively encourages the creation and dissemination of software for the public good. The project thrives on the contributions of developers worldwide, inviting participation from diverse backgrounds and skill sets, strengthening the development process, and enhancing the overall quality of the software. 

The commitment to offering SeaTunnel as a free, robust tool underscores its dedication to accessibility. By removing financial barriers, the project makes advanced technology available to everyone – from individual developers to large organizations, thereby democratizing access to powerful software tools. This approach not only accelerates innovation by tapping into a global pool of talent but also builds a vibrant, supportive community around the project. SeaTunnel’s community-driven development model is a testament to the ASF’s core values. 

Are there any use cases you would like to tell us about? 
SeaTunnel can be used for the offline and real-time synchronization of massive amounts of data and has been deployed in the production environments of thousands of enterprises. One notable enterprise user is JP Morgan. JP Morgan harnesses SeaTunnel to ingest data from PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, and SFTP files, processing data on Spark clusters and ultimately loading it into their centralized data repository S3. Subsequent integration into Snowflake and Amazon Athena facilitates advanced analytics. SeaTunnel has emerged as a critical component in JP Morgan’s data strategy, providing a scalable, Java-friendly data ingestion tool. 

What has been your experience growing the community? 
Growing the community has been a tough but interesting challenge. The community started with just a group of people and has now grown to 300+ contributors from around the globe. People from China, the United States, South Korea, India, Europe, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, etc. are attracted by a shared goal: to build a widely used platform for data synchronization and integration.

What’s the best way to learn about the project and try it out? 
To learn more about SeaTunnel, you can visit the following channels: 

How can others contribute to this project – code contributions being only one of the ways? 
SeaTunnel welcomes both code and non-code contributions. Anyone interested in the project and open-source software is welcome to contribute::

Additionally, we welcome non-code contributions such as bug reporting, testing, feature suggestions, etc.

  • Non-code Contributions：
    • Documentation: Improving or translating the documentation helps lower the entry barrier for new users and developers;
    • Community Support: Engaging in community forums, mailing lists, or chat platforms to help users with questions or challenges fosters a supportive ecosystem around SeaTunnel;
    • Tutorials and Training Materials: Creating tutorials, blog posts, or video content that educates others about SeaTunnel and its applications can help spread awareness and encourage adoption;
    • Event Participation: Organizing or participating in meetups, conferences, and workshops;
    • Design Contributions: Offering design expertise for the project’s UI, website, or promotional materials.

The ASF is home to nearly 9,000 committers contributing to more than 320 active projects including Apache Airflow, Apache Camel, Apache Flink, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Kafka, and Apache Superset. With the support of volunteers, developers, stewards, and more than 75 sponsors, ASF projects create open source software that is used ubiquitously around the world. This work helps us realize our mission of providing software for the public good.

In the midst of hosting community events, engaging in collaboration, producing code and so much more, we often forget to take a moment to recognize and adequately showcase the important work being done across the ASF ecosystem. This blog series aims to do just that: shine a spotlight on the projects that help make the ASF community vibrant, diverse and long lasting. We want to share stories, use cases and resources among the ASF community and beyond so that the hard work of ASF communities and their contributors is not overlooked. 

If you are part of an ASF project and would like to be showcased, please reach out to markpub@aparche.org. 

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