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+#AsterixDB
+
+AsterixDB is a full-function BDMS (Big Data Management System) with a rich feature set that distinguishes it from pretty much any other Big Data platform that's out and available today.  We believe that its feature set makes it well-suited to modern needs such as web data warehousing and social data storage and analysis.  AsterixDB has:
+
+ * A semistructured NoSQL style data model (ADM) resulting from extending JSON with object database ideas
+ * An expressive and declarative query language (AQL) that supports a broad range of queries and analysis over semistructured data
+ * A parallel runtime query execution engine, Hyracks, that has been scale-tested on up to 1000+ cores and 500+ disks
+ * Partitioned LSM-based data storage and indexing to support efficient ingestion and management of semistructured data
+ * Support for query access to externally stored data (e.g., data in HDFS) as well as to data stored natively by AsterixDB
+ * A rich set of primitive data types, including spatial and temporal data in addition to integer, floating point, and textual data
+ * Secondary indexing options that include B+ trees, R trees, and inverted keyword (exact and fuzzy) index types
+ * Support for fuzzy and spatial queries as well as for more traditional parametric queries
+ * Basic transactional (concurrency and recovery) capabilities akin to those of a NoSQL store
+
+Learn more about AsterixDB at [http://asterixdb.ics.uci.edu/] (http://asterixdb.ics.uci.edu/)
+
+
+##Building AsterixDB
+
+To build AsterixDB from source, you should have a platform with the following:
+* A Unix-ish environment (Linux, OS X, will all do).
+* git
+* Maven 3.1.1 or newer.
+* Java 7 or newer.
+
+Additionally to run all the integration tests you should be running `sshd` locally, and have passwordless ssh logins.
+
+
+##Documentation
+
+AsterixDB's official documentation resides at [http://asterixdb.ics.uci.edu/documentation/index.html] (http://asterixdb.ics.uci.edu/documentation/index.html). This is built from the maven project under `asterix-doc/` as a maven site. The documentation on the official website refers to the most stable release version, so for pre-release versions one should refer to the compiled documentation.
+
+##Support/Contact
+
+If you have any questions, please feel free to ask on our mailing list, [dev@asterixdb.incubator.apache.org](mailto:dev@asterixdb.incubator.apache.org). Join the list by sending an email to [dev-subscribe@asterixdb.incubator.apache.org](mailto:dev-subscribe@asterixdb.incubator.apache.org)
+
+