Apache Gravitino™

Introduction

Apache Gravitino is a high-performance, geo-distributed, and federated metadata lake. It manages metadata directly in different sources, types, and regions, providing users with unified metadata access for data and AI assets.

🚀 Key Features

• Unified Metadata Management: Manage diverse metadata sources through a single model and API (e.g., Hive, MySQL, HDFS, S3).
• End-to-End Data Governance: Features like access control, auditing, and discovery across all metadata assets.
• Direct Metadata Integration: Changes in underlying systems are immediately reflected via Gravitino’s connectors.
• Geo-Distribution Support: Share metadata across regions and clouds to support global architectures.
• Multi-Engine Compatibility: Seamlessly integrates with query engines without modifying SQL dialects.
• AI Asset Management (WIP): Support for AI model and feature tracking.

🌐 Common Use Cases

• Federated metadata discovery across data lakes and data warehouses
• Multi-region metadata synchronization for hybrid or multi-cloud setups
• Data and AI asset governance with unified audit and access control
• Plug-and-play access for engines like Trino or Spark
• Support for evolving metadata standards, including AI model lineage

📚 Documentation

The latest Gravitino documentation is available at gravitino.apache.org/docs/latest.

This README provides a basic overview; visit the site for full installation, configuration, and development documentation.

🧪 Quick Start

Use Gravitino Playground (Recommended)

Gravitino provides a Docker Compose–based playground for a full-stack experience.
Clone or download the Gravitino Playground repository and follow its README.

Run Gravitino Locally

1. Download and extract a binary release.
2. Edit conf/gravitino.conf to configure settings.
3. Start the server:

./bin/gravitino.sh start

4. To stop:

./bin/gravitino.sh stop

Press CTRL+C to stop.

5. (Optional) Use the new UI

• To switch to the new UI at runtime: edit conf/gravitino-env.sh (or set the environment variable before starting) and set GRAVITINO_USE_WEB_V2 to true:

export GRAVITINO_USE_WEB_V2=true
./bin/gravitino.sh start

• Alternatively, you can remove the GRAVITINO_USE_WEB_V2=... line from conf/gravitino-env.sh (the template defaults to false); removing that line will revert the service to the legacy UI behavior.

🧊 Iceberg REST Catalog

Gravitino provides a native Iceberg REST catalog service.
See: Iceberg REST catalog service

🗄️ Lance REST Catalog

Gravitino provides a native Lance REST catalog service.
See: Lance REST catalog service

🔌 Trino Integration

Gravitino includes a Trino connector for federated metadata access.
See: Using Trino with Gravitino

🛠️ Building from Source

Gravitino uses Gradle. Windows is not currently supported.

Clean build without tests:

./gradlew clean build -x test

Build a distribution:

./gradlew compileDistribution -x test

Or compressed package:

./gradlew assembleDistribution -x test

Artifacts are output to the distribution/ directory.

More build options: How to build Gravitino

👨‍💻 Developer Resources

• How to build Gravitino
• How to test Gravitino
• Publish Docker images

🤝 Contributing

We welcome all kinds of contributions—code, documentation, testing, connectors, and more!

To get started, please read our CONTRIBUTING.md guide.

🔗 ASF Resources

• 📬 Mailing List: dev@gravitino.apache.org (subscribe)
• 🐞 Issue Tracker: GitHub Issues

🪪 License

Apache Gravitino is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
See the LICENSE file for details.

Apache®, Apache Gravitino™, Apache Hadoop®, Apache Hive™, Apache Iceberg™, Apache Kafka®, Apache Spark™, Apache Submarine™, Apache Thrift™, and Apache Zeppelin™ are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.