Cassandra is a distributed database management software that is open source and has a large column stores, NoSQL database to handle huge amounts of data across numerous commodity servers, which offers high reliability and has the absence of a single source of failure. This system was written using Java and was developed by the Apache Software Foundation.
Avinash Lakshman & Prashant Malik originally developed Cassandra within Facebook to enable inbox search. Facebook the inbox feature for searching. Facebook launched Cassandra as an open-source project on Google software in the month of July. In March 2009, it became an Apache Incubator project , and in February 2010 , it became an official project. Due to its impressive technical capabilities, Cassandra is a huge hit.
Apache Cassandra is used to manage large quantities of structure data distributed all over the world. It offers a highly reliable service that has the ability to fail at any point. Here are a few of the advantages that are part of Apache Cassandra:
It can be scaled it is fault-tolerant, reliable, and constant.
It is a column-oriented database.
The distributed design of the system is inspired by the model of Amazon’s Dynamo along with its database model is based off the Google Big table.
It was developed by Facebook and is quite different from traditional database management systems.
Cassandra uses a Dynamo-style replicating model that does not have a single point of failure , but it adds a more robust “column family” data model. Cassandra is utilized in a variety of most renowned organizations like Facebook, Twitter, Cisco, Rackspace, eBay, Netflix and many others.
The goal of design of Cassandra is to manage large data loads across many nodes with no single source of failure. Cassandra features a peer-to peer distributed system throughout its nodes. Data is shared among all nodes in the cluster.
All nodes of Cassandra in a cluster serve the same function. Each node is separate, yet connected by other nodes. Every node within the cluster is able to accept requests for read or write no matter where data actually in the cluster. If a node is down the request for read or write can be fulfilled by other nodes within the network.
The characteristics of Cassandra:
Cassandra has gained popularity due to its advanced characteristics. Some characteristics of Cassandra:
Easy data distribution –
It allows you to transfer data to wherever you require by distributing the data across multiple data centers.
Examples:
If there are five nodes, such as N1, N2 and N3 4, N5, and using a partitioning algorithm, we will determine the range of tokens and distribute data in accordance with that. Each node will have a distinct token ranges within which data is distributed.
Flexible data storage –
Cassandra supports all possible data formats, including semi-structured, structured, as well as unstructured. It can adapt to your data structure according to your requirements.
Scalability elastic —
Cassandra is extremely flexible and can be expanded to include additional hardware to support many more customers and to store more information as required.
Fast writing —
Cassandra was developed to run on inexpensive hardware that is commonly used. Cassandra client is a lightning fast write and can hold hundreds of terabytes worth of information, but without degrading the efficiency of reading.
Always on Architecture
Cassandra does not have a single point of failure, and is always available for business-critical applications that aren’t able to afford to fail.
Fast linear-scale performance –
Cassandra is scalable in a linear manner, which means that it improves your performance by increasing the amount of servers within the cluster. It maintains a quick response time.
Support for transactions Support for transactions
Cassandra includes properties such as Atomicity and Consistency, Isolation and the Durability (ACID) property of transaction.