Greengage
NOMINEE OVERVIEW
Greengage DB is an open-source massively parallel processing relational DBMS based on the Greenplum Database Software. It is designed for Big Data analytics and data warehousing. We started the Greengage DB project in 2024 as a response to Greenplum becoming a proprietary product in May 2024. The first version of the Greengage DB developer portal was introduced in January 2025. Since then, we have never stopped refining our portal, trying to improve the learning journey and experience for our users: database administrators, data scientists, and software developers. Nevertheless, we already have something to be proud of and to share with the professional community.
NOMINATION RATIONALE
1) BEST ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE IN A DEVELOPER PORTAL
In Greengage, we believe that one of the primary objectives of any developer portal is to facilitate user acquaintance with a new product. Thus, in terms of onboarding experience, our portal provides the following features:
- Comprehensive landing page: The home page of our site highlights the main features of Greengage DB (including those ones that are currently in development), detailed roadmap, links to the product documentation and our repository on GitHub. The provided information is sufficient for the first acquaintance with the product. The navigation menu is also short, clear, and intuitive.
- Video guides: A couple of months ago, we added the first video guide to the landing page. This is a full video version of the installation tutorial, which is available in the text format as well. In our opinion, video content is a great addition to text descriptions. Various content formats make it easier to get started with a product. We look forward to creating new engaging videos for our users.
- Quick start page in documentation: After you select "Documentation" in the top menu of our home site page, you navigate to the main page of the Greengage DB documentation (https://greengagedb.org/en/docs-gg/current/intro.html). This introduction page contains necessary steps to start working with Greengage DB. Using a sequence of numbers helps to better understand the installation order. Below installation and configuration steps, you can find cards with quick links to two installation ways available for Greengage DB. Finally, at the bottom of the page, you can see topics that are currently the most popular among our users (we update this list based on the actual SEO statistics).
- Well-structured content: For the navigation menu of our documentation, we decided to avoid the traditional division of topics into such sections as "How to", "Tutorials", etc. Instead, we selected the distribution of articles based on the described functionality, for example: "Access management", "Database maintenance", "Data management", and so on. This ensures easy user access to relevant information. (The documentation structure currently presented on the documentation site is still incomplete; stay in touch for documentation updates.)
- Documentation search: Currently, our documentation portal provides a built-in lexicographic search based on ElasticSearch. But very soon we are going to introduce a semantic search (with "Ask AI" option) to help our users quickly find answers to their issues.
- Custom settings: After you navigate to documentation from the home site page, you can see the "Settings" menu on the right side (under the TOC menu). These settings allow you to choose the font style (separately for the main text content and code snippets), font size, ability to fix the maximum text width (can be useful if you prefer vertical text orientation), and display mode. For a display mode, we provide three options instead of traditional two: dark, light, and sepia.
2) BEST DEVELOPER PORTAL FOR DATA PRODUCTS
As for the "Best Developer Portal for Data Products" category, we would like to highlight the following features of our portal:
- Usage examples: Since Greengage DB is a database, its documentation should:
- Introduce all database objects (schemas, tables, views, etc.).
- Explain SQL syntax of all commands and show the difference with other databases if any.
- Describe available authentication and authorization options.
- Show possible integration with other data systems.
- Give comprehensive reference information on available SQL commands, keywords, utilities, and so on.
Though our site hasn't covered everything yet, we constantly update the documentation trying to make it comprehensive. Currently, our documentation provides a significant number of step-by-step guides with SQL code samples. All code snippets are created and tested by the team of professional technical writers. These examples are actual and reproducable.
- Blog: In addition to the technical documentation on Greengage DB, our site contains a blog (https://greengagedb.org/en/blog/index.html) with publications from Greengage DB software architects and developers. In the blog, our specialists share their expertise with the open-source community, giving them a closer look under the hood of Greengage DB.
- Transparent changelog: For any data product, it is crutial to monitor product releases. Our site provides a separate page "Releases" ( https://greengagedb.org/en/product-releases/index.html) where users can find full information on the product and documentation updates. On the page, filtering by versions and operating systems is supported.
- Easy quick start: It is hard to start working with a cluster database expecially if you have never installed one of them. Different software components should be installed on different hosts using the specific order. Therefore, it is significant to provide your users with the comprehensive get started guides. For more details on how we implemented this on our portal, you can refer to the description below (see "Best Onboarding Experience in a Developer Portal")
