Our featured contributor for this community spotlight is an enthusiastic and talented developer from South Korea. Even though she joined Apache SeaTunnel only recently, she has already made a name for herself on GitHub and has quickly become one of the most active newcomers.
When asked how she maintains such high energy and motivation, she smiles and says it’s because the community is so welcoming and engaging—it’s easy to get hooked. She’s actively participating in issue discussions, submitting pull requests, and taking on increasingly complex feature developments. Her work proves that “cute can be hardcore too.” Let’s get up close and personal with this vibrant contributor and hear her open-source journey!
Personal Introduction
- Name: Doyeon Kim
- Country: South Korea
- Identity: Computer Science Student
- GitHub ID: dybyte
- Areas of Interest: Mainly interested in web back-end development, but recently has also become interested in data engines. Her hobby is playing Overwatch.
Community Contributions
- PR #9776 — Remove distributed lock when storing metrics in IMap
- Problem: The previous implementation used a distributed lock when accessing metricsImap, which caused both performance and complexity issues. Additionally, the cleanup logic didn’t always work correctly when the lock acquisition failed.
- What I did: I removed the distributed lock and redesigned the workflow so that only the master node directly accesses the IMap. Metric updates and deletions are now reported to the master node instead. I compared several approaches (synchronized, EntryProcessor, compute()) through performance tests, and finally adopted a synchronized-based implementation. Added corresponding unit/integration tests and removed unnecessary lock-based tests.
- Impact: Eliminated lock contention, improved reliability and performance of metric processing, and reduced the risk of memory leaks by fixing cleanup logic.
- PR #9833 — Improve job metrics handling with partitioning support
- Problem: When many tasks updated metrics concurrently, write contention occurred on a single key in the Hazelcast IMap, degrading the performance and scalability of updateMetrics.
- What I did: Introduced the configuration option JOB_METRICS_PARTITION_COUNT, allowing metrics to be distributed across multiple partition keys. The number of partitions can be adjusted to mitigate write contention. Included performance experiments (comparing average update times) in the PR, and added unit/integration tests.
- Impact: Significantly reduced update latency and lock contention in high-concurrency environments. Maintains backward compatibility with a default partition count of 1, but is easily scalable when needed.
- PR #9926 — Filter tasks and pipelines by state
- Problem: Tasks and pipelines in CLOSED or FINISHED states were still included in checkpoint/statistics/trigger processing, which caused unnecessary overhead and potential exceptions.
- What I did: Added state-filtering logic in both CheckpointCoordinator and PhysicalPlanGenerator so that closed or finished entities are excluded from processing. Added tests to verify this behavior.
- Impact: Improved system stability and performance by preventing redundant processing of already completed tasks, reducing unnecessary resource usage.
- PR #9881 — Support defining nested array and map types in Zeta
- Problem: Zeta’s type parser and representation couldn’t fully express nested array/map types, making it difficult to write complex transformation queries.
- What I did: Extended the type system and parsing logic to support nested array/map types of arbitrary depth. Added unit and end-to-end tests to verify the feature.
- Impact: Greatly enhanced Zeta transform query expressiveness and usability, especially for complex data structures in Transform-v2 pipelines.
- CI stabilization (PR #10024, #9997, #9979, #9937, #9921, #9893)
Fixed flaky tests, CI image, and timeout issues, and applied hotfixes related to Druid, MongoDB, and MySQL connectors — improving build and test reliability across CI environments.
- Connector-V2 improvements (PR #9642, #9574, #9632, #9555, #9548, #9462, #9234)
Enhanced connector functionality and compatibility — added Redis key/hash reading options, resolved Netty version conflicts, and improved MaxCompute support for timestamp, upsert session.
As we can see, the wide range of contributions made by this contributor is quite surprising. For someone who has just joined not long ago, she has already made a great deal of substantial contributions, which is truly remarkable. 👍🏻
In addition, to gain a deeper understanding of this newcomer's views on open-source and open-source communities, we have also specifically compiled the original content of this interview:
- How did you know about SeaTunnel for the first time? Is there any story when you are using and contributing to it?
At first, I wanted to contribute to a large open-source project in any way I could. While searching for issues labeled “good first issue,” I came across an issue in Apache SeaTunnel. I was a bit afraid of failing, but the issue seemed relatively approachable, so I decided to give it a try.
My first PR took about a month to merge, which required a lot of patience. At the time, I didn’t fully understand open-source culture, so I often worried if I had done something wrong. However, by figuring out why the CI failed and carefully addressing the reviewers’ comments, I was able to get my PR merged. It was a great learning experience.
- How long have you been involved in open source? Why does open source appeal to you?
My first contribution to open source was almost my very first experience contributing, which was to Apache SeaTunnel, so it’s been about seven months. At first, just having my PR merged was exciting. As I explored and resolved issues, I even received thank-yous from others, which made me happy to know I was helping. I also enjoyed the process of giving and receiving reviews. It felt more rewarding to contribute collaboratively than to work alone.
There are several reasons why I continue contributing to Apache SeaTunnel. First, contributing to other open-source projects can be costly in terms of time and effort; even understanding the structure, code, and contribution guidelines of a single project took me a lot of time. Second, Apache SeaTunnel is active enough to meet my expectations, while some other projects have been stagnant for months. Third, I found working with Apache SeaTunnel’s code genuinely enjoyable—not just coding in general, but exploring its structure.
- What is your first impression of the Apache SeaTunnel community? What benefits you the most in the community, do you think?
I appreciated that everyone in the Apache SeaTunnel community seems to be genuinely committed to keeping the community active. As for what benefits me the most in the community, I think it might be the active review process. Personally, writing reviews can take quite some time, but I like that it helps bring life to stagnant PRs.
Honestly, one of the reasons I’ve been able to continue contributing is the support from the reviewers. I’m really grateful for all your reviews.
- How do you feel about contributing to SeaTunnel? Is the process difficult or makes you feel uncomfortable?
I think I’ve already addressed most of my impressions in the previous answers. If I were to mention a challenge, it would be when a PR’s CI fails due to reasons unrelated to the code changes. Usually, retrying resolves it, but unresolved CI failures can be frustrating for contributors. I’ve tried to mitigate this issue where possible.
- What new features or optimizations do you expect for SeaTunnel?
I haven’t actually used SeaTunnel directly, so I don’t have specific feature requests. However, I plan to continue contributing and would like to help optimize the engine module in the future.
Through this interview, we not only witnessed the growth journey of a new contributor but also once again felt the openness, friendliness, and vitality of the Apache SeaTunnel community.
Every contributor’s story is unique, and it is these stories that continuously make the community stronger. If you’re willing to share your own open-source journey, participation experience, or technical insights, you are warmly welcome to join our community interview series. We look forward to featuring your story in the next issue!
📮Send your submission to me: xiyan@whaleops.com
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