Mastering Apache Cassandra

Get comfortable with the fastest NoSQL database, its architecture, key programming patterns, infrastructure management, and more!

Overview

• Complete coverage of all aspects of Cassandra
• Discusses prominent patterns, pros and cons, and use cases
• Contains briefs on integration with other software

In Detail

Apache Cassandra is the perfect choice for building fault tolerant and scalable databases. Implementing Cassandra will enable you to take advantage of its features which include replication of data across multiple datacenters with lower latency rates. This book details these features that will guide you towards mastering the art of building high performing databases without compromising on performance.

Mastering Apache Cassandra aims to give enough knowledge to enable you to program pragmatically and help you understand the limitations of Cassandra. You will also learn how to deploy a production setup and monitor it, understand what happens under the hood, and how to optimize and integrate it with other software.

Mastering Apache Cassandra begins with a discussion on understanding Cassandra’s philosophy and design decisions while helping you understand how you can implement it to resolve business issues and run complex applications simultaneously.

You will also get to know about how various components of Cassandra work with each other to give a robust distributed system. The different mechanisms that it provides to solve old problems in new ways are not as twisted as they seem; Cassandra is all about simplicity. Learn how to set up a cluster that can face a tornado of data reads and writes without wincing.

If you are a beginner, you can use the examples to help you play around with Cassandra and test the water. If you are at an intermediate level, you may prefer to use this guide to help you dive into the architecture. To a DevOp, this book will help you manage and optimize your infrastructure. To a CTO, this book will help you unleash the power of Cassandra and discover the resources that it requires.

What you will learn from this book

• Write programs using Cassandra’s features more efficiently
• Learn how to get the most out of a given infrastructure and Improve performance, tweak JVM
• Manage clusters and perform housekeeping activities
• Keep an eye on Cassandra processes and machines that hold the data store – get to know simple monitoring mechanisms, such as open sourced and proprietary ones
• Squeeze the value of the data that you hold in Cassandra
• Learn CQL 3 quickly and use Cassandra with Java, Python, NodeJS, Scala, and PHP

Approach

Mastering Apache Cassandra is a practical, hands-on guide with step-by-step instructions. The smooth and easy tutorial approach focuses on showing people how to utilize Cassandra to its full potential.

Who this book is written for

This book is aimed at intermediate Cassandra users. It is best suited for startups where developers have to wear multiple hats: programmer, DevOps, release manager, convincing clients, and handling failures. No prior knowledge of Cassandra is required.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Quick Start
Chapter 2: Cassandra Architecture
Chapter 3: Design Patterns
Chapter 4: Deploying a Cluster
Chapter 5: Performance Tuning
Chapter 6: Managing a Cluster – Scaling, Node Repair, and Backup
Chapter 7: Monitoring
Chapter 8: Integration
Chapter 9: Introduction to CQL 3 and Cassandra 1.2