This document summarizes Cassandra, an open source distributed database. It describes Cassandra's history starting at Facebook, then being taken over by Apache. It provides details on Cassandra's architecture as a massively scalable, distributed, structured data store with tunable consistency levels and fast reads/writes. The document outlines that values in Cassandra are structured and indexed by columns and supercolumns with slicing queries supported. Key features like hinted handoff, Thrift API, data center awareness, pluggable comparators, and enumeration/range queries are also summarized.

1. History
Description
Who
Cassandra In A Nutshell
Eric Evans
eevans@rackspace.com
NoSQL Oakland
November 2, 2009
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

2. History
Description
Who
A prophetess in Troy during the Trojan War. Her predictions were
always true, but never believed.
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

3. History
Description
Who
A massively scalable, distributed (peer-to-peer), structured data
store (aka database).
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

4. History
Description
Who
Outline
1 History
2 Description
3 Who
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

5. History
Description
Who
Facebook
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

6. History
Description
Who
Google Code
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

7. History
Description
Who
Apache
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

8. History
Description
Who
Outline
1 History
2 Description
3 Who
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

9. History
Description
Who
Cassandra is...
O(1) DHT
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

10. History
Description
Who
Cassandra is...
O(1) DHT
Eventual consistency
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

11. History
Description
Who
Cassandra is...
O(1) DHT
Eventual consistency
Tunable trade-offs, consistency vs. latency
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

12. History
Description
Who
But...
Values are structured, indexed
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

13. History
Description
Who
But...
Values are structured, indexed
Columns, Supercolumns
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

14. History
Description
Who
But...
Values are structured, indexed
Columns, Supercolumns
Slicing w/ predicates
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

15. History
Description
Who
And...
Hinted hand-off
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

16. History
Description
Who
And...
Hinted hand-off
Thrift API
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

17. History
Description
Who
And...
Hinted hand-off
Thrift API
Rack/data-center aware partitioning
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

18. History
Description
Who
And...
Hinted hand-off
Thrift API
Rack/data-center aware partitioning
Pluggable comparators
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

19. History
Description
Who
And...
Hinted hand-off
Thrift API
Rack/data-center aware partitioning
Pluggable comparators
Key enumeration, range queries
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

20. History
Description
Who
And...
Hinted hand-off
Thrift API
Rack/data-center aware partitioning
Pluggable comparators
Key enumeration, range queries
Reads are fast, writes are nutty fast
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

21. History
Description
Who
Outline
1 History
2 Description
3 Who
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell

22. History
Description
Who
Droppin’ Names
Facebook
Digg
Rackspace
Twitter
IBM Research
Eric Evans eevans@rackspace.com Cassandra In A Nutshell