One Apache project I find very interesting right now is CouchDB. From the site:

Apache CouchDB is a distributed, fault-tolerant and schema-free document-oriented database accessible via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API. Among other features, it provides robust, incremental replication with bi-directional conflict detection and resolution, and is queryable and indexable using a table-oriented view engine with JavaScript acting as the default view definition language.

Why is it interesting?

Schema-free – as a web app developer, I can relate to anyone who has had frustration or is fed up with managing and maintaining schemas. CouchDB offers a document-based system where each document in the database is loosely related. This means no more schemas to update and manage – simply throw new data into the database. How do I retrieve data that is related to each other? That’s a topic for another conversation, but this’ll get you started. Scroll to the section titled, ‘Views’.

RESTful HTTP/JSON API – JSON is quickly becoming a powerhouse as a data-transfer mechanism. Combined with the principles of REST and accessed through HTTP, querying a CouchDB will be familiar to anyone who’s worked with data-driven applications in Adobe’s Flex technology. At Figaro Interactive, that’s pretty much all we do, so CouchDB fits right into our workflow!

There are more reasons why I’m excitedly watching the CouchDB project, but I’ll save them for a later post. I just wanted to drop a quick line and increase awareness of this pretty cool project.