My Journey in the Apache SeaTunnel Community: Contributions, Challenges, and Reflections

Time flies! It has been almost two years since the Apache SeaTunnel community became a top-level project. The number of contributors and users continues to grow, and SeaTunnel has established itself as a fundamental data synchronization tool for many well-known enterprises in China. As a contributor to SeaTunnel, I have experienced a lot throughout this journey. In this article, I will share my continuous efforts and improvements in the community over the past year.

About Me

Let me introduce myself, describe my professional background, and explain how I got involved with the Apache SeaTunnel community.

• Name:Zhang Donghao
• Current Role:Big Data Architect at China Telecom Yikang
• Technical Focus:Data Lake, Data Integration
• Joined the SeaTunnel Community:February 2024
• How I Discovered SeaTunnel: While leading my company’s data platform development, we faced challenges in efficiently integrating multi-source heterogeneous data. During our research, we found that SeaTunnel’s plugin-based architecture and lightweight design were well-suited to our needs. As we deployed and used it, I was impressed by its flexibility and performance, which led me to contribute to the community actively.

My Contribution Journey

Before becoming a*Committer*, I contributed to the community in various ways.

My First Contribution

My first contribution was improving the*REST API naming conventions*in SeaTunnel (PR #6813).

While using the API, I noticed that the naming was not intuitive and could easily cause misunderstandings. So, I proposed an improvement, which helped me get familiar with the community’s collaboration process and received positive feedback from core members.

Key Contributions and Features I Led

Paimon Connector Optimization

• Truncate Table support(PR #7560)
• Dynamic bucketing support(PR #7335)
• These enhancements improved flexibility and efficiency in data lake scenarios.

Arrow Format Support

• Developed a generalized logic to convert Arrow-format data toSeaTunnelRow.
• Refactored Doris/StarRocks Reader to enhance data parsing performance (PR #8137).

Schema Evolution Enhancement

• Added*DDL event supportforPostgres JDBC Sink(PR #8276) andDameng JDBC Sink*(PR #8380), allowing for seamless adaptation to dynamic schema changes.

Regex-Based Table Matching for MySQL CDC

• Implemented*regex-based table selection*to simplify multi-table synchronization (PR #8323).

CI Optimization for Faster Build Times

• Resolved redundant module execution in CI and isolated time-consuming modules to*reduce failure rates*(PR #8284,PR #8292,PR #8295,PR #8028,PR #8343).

Challenges and How I Overcame Them

Challenge:At first, I was unfamiliar with the*CI process, leading to frequent failures and reduced development efficiency.

**Solution:With the guidance of community mentors, I debugged the CI scriptsline by lineand identified the root cause —duplicate executions of modules*. This experience helped me understand the power of community collaboration and significantly improved my problem-solving skills.

Becoming a Committer

What Does Becoming a Committer Mean to Me?

Being a*Committeris a dual recognition oftechnical contributionsandcollaboration skills. It also comes with greater responsibility. Moving forward, I hope to bridge the gap betweennewcomers and core developers*, fostering a healthier community ecosystem.

My Focus Areas as a Committer

• Deep Integration with Data Lakes
• Incorporate*advanced authentication featuresfrom the latest Paimon versions into SeaTunnel’sPaimon connector*.
• Improving Developer Experience
• Create*better onboarding documentationand establish acontributor growth path*.

Insights into SeaTunnel

Unique Advantages

Extreme Flexibility with a Plugin-Based Architecture

SeaTunnel’s*standardized plugin designallows seamless integration with modern data lake frameworks likeApache Paimon.

For example, we optimized thePaimon Connectorto supportdynamic bucketingandTruncate Table operations*.

A Thriving, Community-Driven Open Ecosystem

The SeaTunnel community is*highly active and responsive, surpassing similar projects in terms of collaboration speed. Whether it’s new feature discussions, bug fixes, or documentation improvements, core members and contributors quickly engage, forming a healthy“users-as-developers”*cycle.

Favorite Features

• Deep Paimon Connector Integration
• With*SeaTunnel’s Paimon Sink, we canstream Kafka data directly into Paimon tablesand utilizedynamic bucketingfor automatic storage optimization —without additional scheduling tasks*.
• End-to-End Schema Evolution Support
• When the source table*adds new fields, SeaTunnelautomatically updates the schemain both thedestination databaseandPaimon table*, eliminating manual intervention in ETL pipelines.

Future Directions

• Enhanced Real-Time Capabilities: Support more*streaming data sources*(e.g., extended Kafka support).
• Cloud-Native Adaptation: Improve*Kubernetes deployment experienceand introduceServerless mode*.
• Domestic Ecosystem Integration: Collaborate with*China’s indigenous software ecosystem*.

Advice for New Contributors

“Use It First, Then Contribute”

My*first PRcame from a real-world pain point.

If you’re new, start small — like fixingtypos in documentationor addingunit tests*.

Recommended Contribution Areas:

• Documentation Enhancements: Improve installation guides or add tutorials in multiple languages.
• Test Coverage Improvements: Add tests for edge cases.
• Enterprise Validation:
• Test*SeaTunnel’s compatibility with ARM servers(e.g., Huawei Kunpeng), which is crucial forChina’s domestic software initiatives*.

Balancing Work, Life, and Open Source

• Hobbies:
• History enthusiast: I enjoy listening to history-related content.
• Cycling: A great way to stay active! As a*newcomer to Chengdu, I highly recommend the city’sRing Road Greenway*for cycling.
• Balancing Work and Open Source:
• Work commitments often make it challenging to follow an ideal time management plan. However,my family’s understanding and supportallow me to focus on both work and open-source contributions.

A Funny Story: “Small Permissions, Big Lesson”

Once, I developed a feature allowing a*Hadoop userto read/writePaimon tables. It worked perfectly in local tests. However, when deployed in production, thejob refused to run*.

After thorough debugging, we discovered the issue —the Apache SeaTunnel service in production runs as**seatunnel-user**, while the uploaded JAR files belonged to*root. A trivialfile ownership mismatch*turned into a major roadblock.

Lesson learned:

In distributed systems, even small details like letter casing or file ownership can trigger cascading failures.

Looking Ahead

I am grateful to my*community mentor, Fan Jia, for guidance inCI optimization, and to mycompany team membersandfamily*for their support.

I hope*Apache SeaTunnelwill become the“Swiss Army Knife”of data integration, attracting moreenterprise usersanddevelopers*.