Getting Started with NoSQL

and Apache Cassandra

Accelerating the Transition from Relational to NoSQL
Apache Cassandra™ is one of the top open
source NoSQL databases used by Fortune
500 companies today, and is purpose-built for
use cases with scale out and high-availability
requirements. DataStax was founded in 2010
as the primary developer of and support
organization for Apache Cassandra.

DataStax Enterprise (DSE) was first released in 2011 and is the most
advanced, enterprise-proven distribution of Cassandra available.
Its masterless architecture is designed to handle big data workloads
across multiple nodes with no single point of failure.

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Cassandra’s peer-to-peer architecture guarantees no
single point of failure to collect and store streaming
data from infrastructure instruments and enables us
to write and read from any node with minimal latency.
Praveen Kumar, Sr. Manager Of Emerging Technologies & Platform, Equinix

Read How

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 Model. Code. Go.

DataStax Academy If you’re a data architect, data scientist, or application developer

familiar with relational databases, this guide provides an opportunity
gives you instant to learn how to sharpen your skills, with advice from the foremost
access to product experts in distributed database technology, so you can migrate to

downloads, learning Cassandra and build the next generation of powerful applications.

tools, and much more. We’ll cover the key differences between Cassandra and relational
databases, how to translate your relational database skills to
Cassandra, and how to get started quickly. We’ll also tell you
Sign Up about resources that will help you on your journey, including:

The DataStax Academy

DataStax Documentation

Learning paths and samples

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Relational and Cassandra.
Compared.

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We realized that we just couldn’t scale effectively
with a traditional MySQL solution. In fact, we couldn’t
even continue to offer the same level of service to our
customers, simply because the speed of access to our
data would have deteriorated as the amount of data grew.
That’s when we decided to move forward with Cassandra.
Harry Robertson, Tech Lead, Ooyala

Read More

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Relational and Cassandra. Compared.

Why Move to DataStax Distributions

of Apache Cassandra?

Apache Cassandra provides incredible resiliency and high

performance for distributed data management; it’s a distributed,
elastically scalable, highly available and fault-tolerant platform with
tunable consistency. DataStax distributions expand on Cassandra’s
benefits with advanced security, performance, multi-model, and
operational management capabilities.

Applications that are time-series based, have high data volumes

like IoT use cases, or those that are real-time transaction-based—
such as fraud detection and customer recommendations—are ideal
candidates, as well as those that require high security and the utmost
resiliency like eCommerce apps.

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Relational and Cassandra. Compared.

Key architectural differences between Cassandra and relational databases are as follows:

Relational Cassandra

Data Structured Unstructured

Schema Fixed Flexible

A list of nested
Table An array of arrays
key-value pairs

Outermost Container Database Keyspace

Entities Tables Tables and columns

Row An individual record Unit of replication

Column Attributes of a relation Unit of storage

Relationships Foreign keys, joins, etc. Collections

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Relational and Cassandra. Compared.

Tapping into Graph Database Technology

DataStax also provides a graph database option that leverages all

the benefits of Cassandra called DataStax Graph. It’s an ideal way to
build data models that represent the complex relationships between
people, products, interactions, and transactions—with high performance
essential for applications that glean insights from connected data like
fraud detection, supply chain optimization, social network analysis, and
customer-facing recommendation engines.

Data storage in a graph database can be compared to a pre-joined

relational database, with built-in data relationships, so foreign keys
are unnecessary. Data is retrieved by traversing the graph, so time-
consuming and error-prone JOIN operations are not required.

Learn how it compares with relational

Learn Now
databases, and ways to migrate.

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Getting Started

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Getting Started

DataStax has simplified You can choose to run them on-premises or in any kind of cloud, including managed, public,
private, hybrid, or multi-cloud. The DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra provides a
the getting started production-ready version of Apache Cassandra and grants access to the DataStax Bulk,
process for DataStax DataStax Apache Kafka Connector, Production Docker Image, developer tools, and a range

distributions (DataStax of services and support.

Enterprise and DataStax With DataStax Enterprise, you get even faster performance, as well as greatly simplified
Distribution of Apache database operations and management features with OpsCenter, advanced developer tools

Cassandra). and security features for more operational simplicity, and multi-model development and
mixed workloads with options like DataStax Graph, DataStax Analytics, and DataStax Search.

It’s simple to start running DataStax Enterprise or the DataStax Distribution

of Apache Cassandra, on-premises or in the cloud. Get Started

Want to fast-track learning Apache Cassandra? Take the free self-paced training
Get Started
and master Cassandra’s internal architecture with hands-on exercises.

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Getting Started

What are the basic building blocks of Cassandra

compared to RDBMS? Here are the highlights:

Keyspaces
In Cassandra, a Keyspace is like the schema concept in relational database management
systems. It’s the top-level object and there is only one keyspace per application. Keyspaces
contain tables, materialized views, and user-defined types, functions, and aggregates, and
they control the replication for the objects they contain at each datacenter in the cluster.

Did you know that CQL (Cassandra Query Language)

provides full DDL, DML, and DCL that makes it easier Learn More
to carry over core concepts from SQL?

Keyspaces Learn More

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Getting Started

Tables
The next structural unit is called the table, where data is stored in tables containing
Managing rows of columns. Tables can be created, dropped, and altered at runtime without
tables Learn More
blocking updates and queries. Just like a relational database, Cassandra tables
require a primary key. The difference is the first element in a primary key is called
a partition key. The partition key has a special use in Apache Cassandra beyond
Making showing the uniqueness of the record in the database, it’s other purpose is one that
schema Learn More
is critical in distributed systems: determining data locality.
changes

Schema Changes
In Apache Cassandra, schema changes naturally take time to propagate to all nodes
in the cluster depending on the size, network capacity, and load on the cluster. As a
result,est practices suggest making these changes one at a time and ensuring they
have fully spread throughout the cluster before moving onto subsequent alterations.

You can use CQL to CREATE/ALTER/DROP/TRUNCATE

Learn More
to manage keyspaces, types, functions, aggregates,
tables, and indexes.

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Introducing CQL
(SQL Skills Welcome)

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Introducing CQL

We touched on CQL earlier—it’s a fast way to start

working with Cassandra, especially when you’re
familiar with SQL, so you can quickly start creating
or altering keyspaces and tables, making changes
to data, and performing queries.

If you’re familiar with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE in SQL, you’re ready
for CQL and can refer to our CQL Quick Reference Guide. We’ve also highlighted
some of the key similarities and differences below:

Learn all the CQL commands Learn Now

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Introducing CQL

Operation CQL Examples

SELECT col_0, col_1 FROM my_table;

Retrieving all rows in a table looks the same when comparing SQL and CQL
SELECT SELECT col_0, col_1 FROM my_table WHERE ...;
In SQL, any column can be included in the WHERE clause, though in CQL only columns that are strictly declared in the primary key can
be used as a restricting column. Also, each query must have a partition key defined at a minimum.

INSERT INTO my_table (col_0, col_1) VALUES (val_0, val_1);

INSERT UPDATE UPDATE my_table SET col_0=val_0 WHERE ...;
DSE and Cassandra are best-in-class at high throughput writes. Bear in mind that in CQL, both INSERT and UPDATE must include the partition key.

DELETE FROM my_table WHERE ...;

DELETE In SQL, there is only the option to remove the entire row(s) using the DELETE syntax. In CQL, you can delete specific columns using
DELETE my_col FROM my_table WHERE ...;

Did you know that in Cassandra, data isn’t deleted in the same way it is in an RDBMS?
Learn How
Apache Cassandra is designed for high write throughput and avoids reads-before-writes.
It uses SSTables, which are immutable once written. So, a delete is an update and updates
are actually inserts (into new SSTables). Want to manage data effectively?

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Introducing CQL

Just like how you control permissions and resources

of the entities in SQL, you can do the same in CQL:

_CREATE ROLE _RESTRICT

_ALTER ROLE _UNRESTRICT
_DROP ROLE _RESTRICT ROWS
_LIST ROLES _UNRESTRICT ROWS
_GRANT _LIST PERMISSIONS
_REVOKE

While native integration always provides

the best performance, you can connect See How
your Business Intelligence and other tools
using DataStax ODBC/JDBC drivers.

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Balancing Transactional
Integrity

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Penn Mutual started out with a traditional RDBMS
approach for the persistence layer of their Core
Service but soon realized that it could not meet
their requirements for application performance or
scalability. They turned to DataStax Enterprise instead.

Learn More

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Balancing Transactional Integrity

As a non-relational database, Apache Cassandra and DataStax

Write
data Enterprise does not support joins or foreign keys and consequently
does not offer consistency in the ACID sense. But it does offer
Memory memtable
atomic, isolated, and durable transactions with eventual and tunable
Disk consistency that allows the user to decide how strong or eventual
Index they want each transaction’s consistency to be.
Flush

Commit Log SSTable • Atomicity. A write and a delete operation is atomic at the partition
level. Insertions or updates of two or more rows in the same
partition are treated as one write operation.
• Isolation. Write and delete operations are performed with full row-
level isolation, so a row within a single partition on a single node
is only visible to the client performing the operation.
• Durability. Writes are durable. All writes to a replica node are
recorded both in memory and in a commit log on disk before they
are acknowledged as a success.

Get all the details about DataStax and

Get Details
Apache Cassandra database internals.

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Ways to Migrate
Your Workloads

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We pulled in one year of data from Oracle and once
we got it into DataStax Enterprise, built on the best
distribution of Apache Cassandra, it was smooth ride
and it was processing at a very high rate.
Mukram Aziz, Sr. Manager of Data Services, Capital One

Read How

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Ways to Migrate Your Workloads

How do I ingest from an existing There are many ways to migrate data from your relational databases into Apache
relational database (RDBMS)
Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise. Here’s where you can start.
to an Apache Cassandra or
DataStax Enterprise cluster?

Learn How Load and unload CSV or JSON data in and out of the DSE database. DataStax Bulk
DataStax Bulk Loader
Loader efficiently and reliably loads small or large amounts of data, supporting
(dsbulk)
developer and production environments.

Imports data from a comma-separated values (CSV) file or a delimited text file into
CQL COPY FROM
an existing table, mainly for datasets that have less than 2 million rows.

Bulk loads large volumes of external data into a cluster by streaming a set
sstableloader
of SSTable data files to a live cluster.

Several Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) tools like Talend, Informatica, and StreamSets also support Apache
Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise, providing sophisticated data transformation logic, point-and-click
interfaces, scheduling, and more, to manage data movement.

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Next Steps

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Next Steps

Take a Learning Path to gain an expert understanding of Apache Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise principles
related to your role. Each Learning Path is composed of a sequence of recommended courses for your role, curated
by our curriculum engineers. When you complete your path, you will receive a printable Certificate of Completion.
You can follow your progress along the path in the chart below and switch to a different path at any time.

Administrator Architect Developer Graph Specialist

DS101: Introduction to Apache CassandraTM Included Included Included Included

DS201: DataStax Enterprise 6 Foundations

Included Included Included Included
of Apache CassandraTM

DS210: DataStax Enterprise 6 Operations

Included Included N/A N/A
with Apache CassandraTM

DS220: DataStax Enterprise 6 Practical

Application Data Modeling with Apache N/A Included Included Included
CassandraTM

DS330: DataStax Enterprise 6 Graph N/A N/A N/A Included

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Conclusion

Moving to Apache Cassandra with DataStax is faster and easier than ever before. That means that you can use the same technology
that’s powering the world’s leading enterprises—like Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, Delta Airlines, eBay, Macy’s, McDonald’s, Safeway,
Sony, and Walmart—and be up and running in no time.

As the world’s leading Cassandra experts, DataStax provides the community with online training, certification, and full documentation;
DataStax Examples provide sample code for developers to reference and shorten the path to getting started. You can also access
DataStax expertise directly through professional services and support options that can ensure the right level development or
deployment help whenever you need it in your journey.

Get started today at https://www.datastax.com/get-started.

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About DataStax

DataStax delivers the only active everywhere hybrid cloud database built on Apache Cassandra™: DataStax Enterprise
and DataStax Distribution of Apache Cassandra, a production-certified, 100% open source compatible distribution of
Cassandra with expert support. The foundation for contextual, always-on, real-time, distributed applications at scale,
DataStax makes it easy for enterprises to seamlessly build and deploy modern applications in hybrid cloud. DataStax
also offers DataStax Managed Services, a fully managed, white-glove service with guaranteed uptime, end-to-end
security, and 24x7x365 lights-out management provided by experts at handling enterprise applications at cloud scale.
More than 400 of the world’s leading brands like Capital One, Cisco, Comcast, Delta Airlines, eBay, Macy’s, McDonald’s,
Safeway, Sony, and Walmart use DataStax to build modern applications that can work across any cloud. For more
information, visit www.DataStax.com and follow us on Twitter @DataStax.

© 2019 DataStax, All Rights Reserved. DataStax, Titan, and TitanDB are registered trademarks of DataStax, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.

Apache, Apache Cassandra, and Cassandra are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation or its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States, and/or other countries.

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