Ten Questions to Consider Before Choosing Cassandra

  1. Do you know what your queries will look like ? In traditional SQL you design your data model to represent your business objects. Your queries can then evolve over time and can be ad-hoc. You can even create views, materialized or otherwise, to facilitate even more complex analytical queries. Cassandra does not offer … Continue reading Ten Questions to Consider Before Choosing Cassandra

Apple is (or was) the Biggest User of Apache Cassandra

One thing I did not realize about Cassandra is that Apple is (or was) one of the biggest Cassandra users out there: Word in Goldmacher's circles is that Apple will be “replacing” its huge Cassandra noSQL implementation with FoundationDB. Apple uses Cassandra for “iMessage, iTunes passwords, a bunch of stuff,” he says. In fact, Apple … Continue reading Apple is (or was) the Biggest User of Apache Cassandra

Cassandra: a key puzzle piece in a design for failure

When building out a data center in the cloud (AWS in particular) Cassandra can play a crucial role in the design for failure. SQL and NoSQL databases have drastically different redundancy profiles: A NoSQL database (and I hate the term NoSQL with the passion of a billion white hot suns) trades off data consistency for … Continue reading Cassandra: a key puzzle piece in a design for failure

Things I wish Apache Cassandra was better at

At first I wanted to name this article “My personal list of grievances against Apache Cassandra”, but I decided to take a more positive approach. Only Java developers need apply Surely you can use Cassandra with non-Java clients but the reality is that administering and maintaining Cassandra itself requires very significant knowledge of Java and … Continue reading Things I wish Apache Cassandra was better at