Welcome to Apiary
Apiary is a distributed data processing framework inspired by bee colony intelligence. It is designed to run on inexpensive hardware -- Raspberry Pis, NUCs, old laptops -- while scaling seamlessly to cloud compute. Users write data via Python, query via SQL, and the swarm distributes work across available nodes with no central controller.
How these docs are organized
This documentation follows the Diataxis framework, which separates content by its purpose:
Tutorials
Learning-oriented. Step-by-step guided lessons that take you from zero to a working Apiary deployment. Start here if you are new.
- Your First Apiary -- Install, create data, query it
- Sensor Data Pipeline -- Build a realistic data pipeline with partitioning and aggregations
- Multi-Node Swarm -- Set up a distributed cluster with Docker Compose
How-to Guides
Task-oriented. Practical steps for accomplishing specific goals. You know what you want to do; these show you how.
- Install Apiary
- Install on Windows
- Write and Query Data
- Deploy on Raspberry Pi
- Deploy with Docker
- Deploy Pi Profiles
- Monitor Swarm Health
- Troubleshooting
- Contributing
Reference
Information-oriented. Technical descriptions of APIs, SQL syntax, configuration options, and terminology. Look things up here.
Explanation
Understanding-oriented. Discussions of architecture, design decisions, and the reasoning behind Apiary's approach. Read these to understand why things work the way they do.
Quick links
| I want to... | Go to... |
|---|---|
| Get started for the first time | Your First Apiary |
| Install on Windows | Install on Windows |
| Look up a Python SDK method | Python SDK Reference |
| Deploy on a Raspberry Pi | Deploy on Raspberry Pi |
| Understand the architecture | Architecture Overview |
| Set up multiple nodes | Multi-Node Swarm Tutorial |
| Fix an error | Troubleshooting |
| Contribute to the project | Contributing |