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<p>I am very excited to announce that Apache Incubator Samza 0.7.0 has been released. In all, 156 JIRAs were <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-309?jql=project%20%3D%20SAMZA%20AND%20fixVersion%20%3D%200.7.0%20AND%20status%20in%20(Resolved%2C%20Closed)">resolved</a> in this release. Notable work done includes:</p>

<ul>
<li>Initial import of code into Apache. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-1">SAMZA-1</a>)</li>
<li>Upgraded to YARN 2.2 from YARN 2.05-alpha. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-9">SAMZA-9</a>)</li>
<li><a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20SAMZA%20AND%20fixVersion%20%3D%200.7.0%20AND%20status%20in%20(Resolved%2C%20Closed)%20and%20component%20%3D%20kv">Numerous</a> state management bug fixes.</li>
<li>Java 7 support. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-16">SAMZA-16</a>)</li>
<li>A <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20SAMZA%20AND%20fixVersion%20%3D%200.7.0%20AND%20status%20in%20(Resolved%2C%20Closed)%20and%20component%20%3D%20docs">ton</a> of work on <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/learn/documentation/0.7.0/">documentation</a>, <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/learn/tutorials/0.7.0/">tutorials</a>, <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/startup/hello-samza/0.7.0/">hello-samza</a>, and <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/learn/documentation/0.7.0/api/javadocs/">Javadocs</a>.</li>
<li>Scala 2.10 support, and removal of support for Scala 2.8 (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-128">SAMZA-128</a>, <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-160">SAMZA-160</a>)</li>
<li>One-off resets for input stream offsets. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-180">SAMZA-180</a>)</li>
<li>Upgrade to support <a href="http://kafka.apache.org/">Apache Kafka</a> 0.8.1, which includes log compaction. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-180">SAMZA-180</a>)</li>
<li>A consensus based shutdown API. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-SAMZA-253">SAMZA-SAMZA-253</a>)</li>
</ul>

<p>Source (TODO link) and binary (TODO link) downloads of the release are available here (TODO link).</p>

<p>We've also made a lot of community progress during this release:</p>

<ul>
<li>Added 4 new <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/community/committers.html">committers</a> (Garry Turkington, Martin Kleppmann, Zhijie Shen, and Yan Fang).</li>
<li>Accepted patches from 14 distinct contributors</li>
<li><a href="http://wiki.apache.org/samza/PapersAndTalks">Presented on Samza's architecture and usage.</a></li>
<li>Had over 1000 emails to the <a href="http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-samza-dev/">developer mailing list</a>.</li>
</ul>

Even after all this work, there's still <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20SAMZA%20AND%20resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20ORDER%20BY%20priority%20DESC">a lot to be done</a>. In our next release (0.8.0), we're planning to focus on performance. This work includes:

<ul>
<li>Switching Samza's state feature to use RocksDB instead of LevelDB. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-236">SAMZA-236</a>)</li>
<li>Supporting pluggable partition-container assignment strategies. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-71">SAMZA-71</a>)</li>
<li>Improving consumer performance. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-245">SAMZA-245</a>)</li>
<li>Upgrading Samza's YARN UI. (<a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-32">SAMZA-32</a>, <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-237">SAMZA-237</a>, <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SAMZA-290">SAMZA-290</a>)</li>
</ul>

<p>Now is a great time to get involved. You can start by running through the <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/startup/hello-samza/0.7.0/">hello-samza</a> tutorial, signing up for the <a href="http://samza.incubator.apache.org/community/mailing-lists.html">mailing list</a>, and grabbing some <a href="https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20SAMZA%20AND%20labels%20%3D%20newbie%20AND%20status%20%3D%20Open">newbie JIRAs</a>.</p>

<p>I'd like to close by thanking everyone who's been involved in the project. It's been a great experience to be involved in this community, and I look forward to its continued growth.</p>