Do you ever hear the term “Apache”? However, people who are already in the technology field might be aware of “Apache Projects”. So let’s start to know more about Apache. Before getting narrow down to the topic “Apache Projects” let’s understand first about Apache. So, first of all, we will understand what Apache is.

What is Apache?

Basically, Apache is an HTTP server. It is an open-source and cross-platform web server. Hope you are familiar with the word “server” which means that it is also a computer. But being a web server, it provides data to other computers in form of websites over the internet. This software was developed by an open community of developers under the Apache Software Foundation. The release of this software was under the License of Apache License 2.0. The previous versions of Apache were running only on Linux but now they are available for Microsoft Windows also. The first version of this software was available in the year 1995 but the foundation of this server was started in the USA at NCSA.

During the starting growth of the World Wide Web, Apache played an important role. This webserver served many websites. A survey, reveals that Apache gives service to 29.12% of million websites.

What does the Apache word mean?

The word Apache according to Wikipedia definition is a cute name which is depending on some code and series of software patches. Different definitions of it are available over the internet. Well, you can refer them also. The word Apache is taken as respect for Native American nations, who were known for their quite superior skills. The earlier name of Apache was httpd means “HTTP daemon” which was running on UNIX. The latest version of Apache is version 2.4.46 that is a secure and bug fix release.

So overall you can say that Apache is popular because it delivers HTML pages, multimedia, and CSS style sheets. The main advantage of this software is that it is free to download and use. You can say that the Apache Foundation doesn’t provide direct support but still, documentation is available.

On average, you can say it is a modular application. You can add it to your core application to get more functionality. For instance, it is combining with a SQL database and server-side programming language like PHP. Apache Tomcat is one module of this server that provides java servlet support to clients.

Features of Apache

  • It is a well-optimized server.
  • If there is a large amount of traffic then this software is the best option to handle it.
  • This software also provides the facility to transfer data on minimal hardware requirements.
  • It is easily scalable.
  • This is a free server.

How does Apache Servers work?

It is basically a program that does multiple tasks. As the client requests the server, it collects the data from the server file system and delivers it to the client. You can think of the client as a web browser and the server file system is a place where the website data is present. The Apache server can process multiple requests. To create data and content, the server interacts with various modules, applications, and databases.

Various companies like Apple, Google, PayPal, and Adobe trust Apache and nearly 67% of websites use its services. Usually, the most compatible operating system for Apache is Linux. WordPress hosting providers also use Apache to be used with cPanel for management purposes.

You can use Apache for hosting static and dynamic websites that use server-side scripting languages. The newer version of Apache is proving multi-processing modules and server name indication

Now let’s move to our main topic of discussion “The Apache Projects”. 350+ open-source Apache Projects are provided by Apache Software Foundation (ASF) which is 20 years old. These apache projects are maintained by 770 individuals and 7000 committers. In this article, I am going to tell you about the 25 best Apache Projects.

These all are the latest and best Apache Projects but the important point is that on which of these you want to work. Let’s have detailed information about them.

HTTP Server

  • It is the most famous open-source HTTP server.
  • This server is quite secure and efficient.
  • Such a server provides the best HTTP standard services for operating systems like Unix, macOS, and Windows.
  • This server supported the growth of the World Wide Web.
  • Apache HTTP server project was ASF’s flagship project.
  • The committer of this project is Jagielski since 1995.
  • The latest version httpd 2.4.4 provides high performance for the cloud.

Cassandra

  • This project was under the supervision of Jonathan Ellis.
  • Cassandra is a database that provides a scalable system of records in big data.
  • It provides a highly scalable data store for applications.
  • An example is Netflix which runs many clusters of Cassandra.
  • Replication of Cassandra is possible over multiple data centers.
  • It provides fault tolerance in the case of cloud and commodity hardware.
  • The Cassandra version 2.0 contains CAS and trigger facilities.

Flex

  • This project was donated by Adobe.
  • This is an application framework using Flash rich Internet plug-in technology of Adobe.
  • Using Flex you can develop iOS, Android, and desktop applications.
  • This Framework helps in building browsing apps.
  • This project is under Alex Harui.
  • The new version of Flex is 4.10 which will include support for HTML5 and many other improvements.

Cordova

  • Cordova helps developers to access camera capabilities through JavaScript.
  • It works along with other frameworks like jQuery and Sencha Touch.
  • The origination of the project was done by Nitobi, which was taken over later by Adobe.
  • It is an open-source project for making apps for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
  • The new version Cordova 3.0 is coming soon as mentioned by its vice president Brian Leroux.

Syncope

  • This project basically manages the digital identity.
  • It works with enterprise applications to deal with information of users.
  • It controls access over data.
  • Identity management uses user attributes, roles, and resources.
  • This management includes the Italian army and various universities like Swiss SWITCH University and many others.

Spatial Information System

  • Various atmospheric administrations, national space centers, governments, and space agencies depend on Apache Spatial Information System.
  • This project is used for the creation of standard interoperable geospatial applications that are intelligent enough.
  • The project toolkit works with space data, location data, and geospatial data.
  • This project helps in the visualization of smart cities, the discovery of geospatial data, and observation of earth.
  • It helps in the modeling of information for Mars and asteroids.

Hadoop

  • The first version of this software was available in 2006.
  • It provides distributed computing by an operating system.
  • The main contributor to Hadoop is Doug Cutting.
  • Hadoop allows you to run computations over many computers.
  • This project arose from Nutch Web software.
  • Many big companies making business using Hadoop like Cloudera or HortonWorks.
  • In the coming versions of Hadoop, importance is given to security and scalability.
  • It is used in Kubernetes.

Maven

  • This project is used for management purposes in 2004.
  • You can consider this project as a comprehensive tool and it is used for easy management of builds, reports, and documentation of projects.
  • It provides java development.
  • As said by Brett Porter who is CTO at DevOps automation vendor, Maven has a way to run the projects at a faster rate.
  • This can integrate with Jenkins tools and works as a build automation tool.
  • It is stable, flexible, and enriched with features.

Spark

  • It has a fast analytics engine used for large data processing.
  • Spark provides streaming analytics which adds functionality.
  • It helps data scientists to use machine learning.
  • It empowers various libraries such as Spark SQL, Spark Streaming, MLib, and GraphX to improve response and accurate results.
  • This project is adopted by various companies IBM, MapR, and data bricks.
  • The main committer of this project is Reynold S. Xin.
  • It is using different languages like Java, Scala, and python for its programming.

Tomcat

  • This is based on Java Servlet and Java Server Pages.
  • It is basically a java application server.
  • The Apache TomEE is the web profile version Java EE 6 of tomcat.
  • The release manager of Tomcat 4 and 7 is Mark Thomas.
  • The tomcat supports non-blocking I/O that helps in writing highly scalable apps.
  • Various web infrastructures like eBay, E-Trade, Walmart, and Weather channel uses Apache tomcat.
  • Apache Tomcat also provides Web Socket communications.

Wicket

  • It is a web framework that is component-based.
  • It is based on a POJO data model that is a plain old java object.
  • This software project offers a markup or logic separation facility.
  • To create a reusable and powerful component you can make use of such a project.
  • You have to follow the java and Html related object-oriented approach in this project.
  • It supports various applications and sites such as Apress, DHL, SAP, and Vodaphone.

Daffodil

  • To handle complex and legacy data you can make use of this project.
  • This software is mostly famous for the security provided by it.
  • It makes use of DFDL that is Data Format Description language.
  • It provides various Legacy file formats to parse data to XML or JSON.
  • Using this software project it is easy to validate, sanitize, and transform data files to its original format.
  • It can be used to mitigate large vulnerable varieties.

Cloudstack

  • This is very quick to deploy and properly documented.
  • The production environment associated with this project is simple.
  • It provides services to Fortune 100’s top 5% clouds.
  • The community associated with cloudstack is agile, focused, and cohesive.
  • It is helping users to build fully-featured clouds.
  • It is been 11 years that cloudstack is still ranking at the top in providing services.

Zookeeper

  • It is used to maintain configuration information.
  • It is a centralized service used by distributed systems.
  • Being centralized it acts as a key-value store that is hierarchical for storage or managing of data.
  • The main purpose of a zookeeper is the synchronization of applications.
  • It works in conjunction with Hadoop.
  • It is used by AdroitLogic enterprise and B2B service providers.
  • To coordinate nodes, this software is very beneficial.

Ignite

  • It is a data management project.
  • Ignite is used for workloads that could be transactional, Analytical, or streamed.
  • It is used in Yahoo Japan, airlines of America, and other hybrid environments.
  • It has data fabrics in its memory.
  • Apache ignite gives data grid, compute grid, and acceleration solution for Big data ecosystem.

Lucene

  • It is a library of search engine software.
  • This project supports the search that is Java-based and facilitates the indexing platform.
  • It is used for the processing of ranked searching.
  • It was developed by Doug Cutting in Java.
  • New versions of it are available in other programming languages like Perl, C++, Python, and many more.
  • Benipal Technologies uses this project.

POI

  • It is an API that is open source.
  • Programmers use it to manipulate file formats.
  • The word POI means Poor Obfuscation Implementation.
  • You can manipulate Microsoft office based open XML standards and OLE2 compound document format.
  • You can often create or modify office files using POI.
  • The German railway pan-European train protection system is build using POI.

cTAKES

  • This was developed in 2006 at Mayo clinic by a few physicians, scientists, and engineers.
  • It acts as a system that processes natural language to extract information from medical records text which is electronic.
  • Today this software processed approximately 80 million clinical notes.
  • It works for many wired informatics companies.
  • cTAKES is rapidly growing over many hospitals and academic institutions as a clinical data management infrastructure.

Kafka

  • This project was made available in the year 2011.
  • It allows publishing and subscription of record streams.
  • The project is a distributing stream platform.
  • To make real-time data pipelines, we make use of this project.
  • To react and transform according to a real-time ingested data stream such a project is in the high demand for creating applications.
  • It is using Scala and Java programming language.
  • Kafka makes use of Producer, Consumer, Streams, and Connector to run.
  • Companies like LinkedIn uses this software.

PLC4X

  • This project was developed at code-centric AG.
  • It became part of the incubator of apache in December 2017.
  • Developers use this software to create IoT applications.
  • Christofer Dutz is the supervisor of this project.
  • PLCs often communicate with each other or the SCADA system.
  • It is based on Java language with the support of S7-Step7 and Beckhoff ADS.
  • New versions of PLC4X support C++ and C#.

Netbeans

  • It is a famous environment, platform, and framework used for building desktop, mobile, and web apps.
  • Initially, it was a student project in 1996 but later sun Microsystems acquired it in 2010.
  • Its new version Apache Netbeans 11.0 is available now.
  • Jaroslav Tulach is the founder of this project.
  • It became part of the Apache incubator in October 2016.

Geronimo

  • It is a modular, composable, open-source server runtime.
  • This server integrates with many other open-source projects to create Java/OSGi server runtime.
  • The newer version of Geronimo would be a Java EE 7.
  • This project came into the apache incubator in the year 2003.
  • The server includes Tomcat, MyFaces, and OpenJPA.

Skywalking

  • It acts as a monitoring tool for checking the performance of an application.
  • China makes use of this project to a large extent.
  • Apache skywalking is used for instrumentation of microservices, cloud-native, and applications based on the container.
  • Many big companies like Alibaba, China merchant bank, and Huawei use it.
  • The initial version of this tool was available in 2015 and entered into an incubator in December 2017.
  • It is a tracing system that is open source.

OFBiz

  • This project is used for the management of accounting and CRM.
  • It is a complete business application.
  • This project makes use of data warehousing and inventory control.
  • It is a java based framework that provides B2B and B2C management of the business.
  • It is very easy to make customization and expand in this framework.
  • This is a type of free, flexible, and open source ERP system.

Also Read: 25+ Best Open Source by Google

CouchDB

  • According to Jan Lehnardt, the important feature of CouchDB is the replication mechanism.
  • It allows the synchronization of the CouchDB instance.
  • This database makes use of JSON, JavaScript, and HTTP for documents, MapReduce queries, and APIs respectively.
  • This project provides replication of data to distribute it globally to users.
  • To get more flexibility the engine of CouchDB need to do some changes like the use of  V8 and Node.js

Conclusion

In conclusion, the  Apache Software Foundation is such a platform that allows many open source projects and communities to become its part. It is growing day by day. Apache Projects manages a huge amount of data so it is an integral part of every computing system. Through this article, I have tried to give you a detailed description of Apache projects. So as the need for open-source software keeps on increasing, the number of communities will also increase to solve the existing problems. Do share your suggestions or doubts about the article. Don’t forget to check the new article.