About
The Bizgres Project is commecially sponsored and community supported open source project. The supporters, currently by Greenplum, JasperSoft, Kinetic Networks and Loyalty Matrix, are the “Bizgres coalition.” The goal of Bizgres is to build a complete, database system for business intelligence exclusively from free software. Development will be done in public forums. The Greenplum engineering team will not only participate in the building of Bizgres packages, but will invite and encourage outside participation from commercial entities as well as individual contributors. The Bizgres Project is open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, and follows a set of project objectives which will evolve. The community is defined as those who not only consume but also produce for the good of the other community members.
The community, Greenplum and the other companies will:
- Contribute and maintain code or documentation
- Contribute interaction design and usability testing
- Report bugs
- Test software
- Advocate Bizgres, PostgreSQL, and open source in general
- Participate in mailing lists
- Experiment with the technology
- Help others in the community
Who is it for?
Bizgres is targeted at propelling PostgreSQL into practical, real-world use within mainstream businesses needing high-quality relational database management systems for business intelligence. Most deployments will likely be for departmental applications, though enterprise workloads will also be common. Bizgres will help to make PostgreSQL a powerful alternative to Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Microsoft proprietary databases.
Who Leads?
The community members are responsible for making technical decisions that align with the stated project objectives. This is a new project and participation is the most important aim, so we are focused on not weighing down the project with unnecessary process or beaurocracy. The developers who make up the project will create a process for organizing project decision making.
What Support is Available?
Commercial-grade technical support is now available for Bizgres via Greenplum’s Bizgres Network. More information is available at Greenplum’s website. Business intelligence reporting platforms and GUI components are supported by JasperSoft, Loyalty Matrix, Kinetic Networks and others. Members of the Bizgres technical committees also create, manage, and participate in forums where community members can support each other. Community support is opportunistic – no guarantees, warranties, or Service Level agreements. In the future, we expect that other companies will come to offer commercial support as well.