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Cassandra

Cassandra

Overview

What is Cassandra?

Cassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Apache Cassandra has gained extensive popularity and usage across various critical use cases and platform solutions in many organizations. …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 7 features
  • Availability (5)
    8.8
    88%
  • Performance (5)
    8.5
    85%
  • Security (5)
    8.0
    80%
  • Concurrency (5)
    7.6
    76%
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Pricing

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What is Cassandra?

Cassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.

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Product Demos

Presto and Cassandra: Doing SQL and Joins on Cassandra Tables

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CassandraDB Connector Demo | CassandraDB Integration

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Open Source BI Tools and Cassandra

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Spark and Cassandra: Doing SQL and Joins on Cassandra Tables

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Real-time IoT data analytics and visualization with Kaa, Apache Cassandra, and Apache Zeppelin

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Features

NoSQL Databases

NoSQL databases are designed to be used across large distrusted systems. They are notably much more scalable and much faster and handling very large data loads than traditional relational databases.

8
Avg 8.8
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Product Details

Cassandra Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Cassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.

Reviewers rate Scalability highest, with a score of 9.5.

The most common users of Cassandra are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(94)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Apache Cassandra has gained extensive popularity and usage across various critical use cases and platform solutions in many organizations. Users have found it particularly useful in the tax domain, small businesses, profile platforms, and AB testing platforms. Algorithmic Ads, for example, relies solely on Cassandra for both real-time transactions and analytics.

In terms of implementation, a lightweight Java application serves as the primary means of accessing Cassandra, providing a RESTful web services API for seamless integration with other applications. This API is used internally as well as by customers, making it a central point for integration that includes business logic and data. The outstanding performance, linear scalability, and continuous availability of Cassandra make it a preferred choice among developers when a highly available NoSQL database is required.

Furthermore, Cassandra has proven its capabilities in multiple scenarios. It currently supports an enterprise eCommerce platform, offering excellent performance and acting as a powerful NoSQL database. Additionally, it has been employed to build a fully functional proof of concept for a shipment cloud concept at FedEx. By combining InMemory and NoSQL storage solutions, Cassandra enables unified RESTful-based service that caters to queries for the latest or historical shipment status. Moreover, users have found that Cassandra serves as a reliable backup for the IMDG component in case of a complete crash.

Cassandra's versatility extends to other domains as well. It effectively handles non-standard RDBMS data by providing fast write speeds and suitability for storing flat data. Many organizations leverage its cluster configuration to store personalization data for customers, ensuring up-to-date information with low latency. Cassandra also plays a crucial role in storing data in JSON format, allowing for efficient data storage and retrieval.

Moreover, Cassandra seamlessly integrates with various systems to provide distributed system logic. For instance, it is a core component of the HyperStore S3-compatible object storage system and collaborates with other Java servers to create scalable and fault-tolerant architectures.

Additionally, Cassandra has proven its efficiency in academic projects related to cloud computing and Salesforce, outperforming traditional RDBMS solutions. Prominent companies like Facebook and Uber rely on Cassandra for their real-time running apps due to its improved performance capabilities.

Although users have encountered challenges with the documentation, they still highly recommend using Cassandra for its scalability and faster request processing. Overall, Cassandra is a valuable asset for geographically dispersed architectures, offering availability, consistency, data distribution across multiple machines, and expandability on demand.

Greatest community and adoption: The Java-based NoSQL database has garnered a strong following with its greatest community and adoption. Many users have found it to be a highly popular choice among developers, benefiting from the extensive support and resources available.

Excellent integration with Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Solr: Reviewers have consistently praised the database for its excellent integration capabilities with Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Solr. This seamless integration provides a robust ecosystem of tools that enable efficient unit tests and stress testing.

Best-in-class performance across various workloads: Users have consistently highlighted the exceptional performance of this database across various read/write/mixed workloads. Its ability to provide low latency and high throughput has been widely appreciated by customers who require fast data retrieval and processing.

Missing Features: Some users have expressed that Apache Cassandra lacks certain functionalities, such as security and advanced tools like OpsCenter. They believe these features should be included in the open source version.

Challenging Data Modeling: Users with a background in relational databases may find it challenging to understand and work with NoSQL databases like Cassandra. They mention that data modeling needs to revolve around queries rather than the data structure.

Operational Challenges: Managing a large Cassandra cluster, even with the DataStax Enterprise Version, can pose challenges for maintenance teams due to frequent version upgrades and auto-repair. Users express the need for improved operational tools and continued enhancements to handle large clusters and massive amounts of data effectively.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-5 of 5)
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Priti Asai / Thakkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cassandra is currently used for our enterprise eCommerce platform. So far our experience is good with Cassandra its an extremely powerful NoSQL Database with high performance—distributed, scalable, and highly available database platform.
  • Continuous data availability is extremely powerful feature of Cassandra.
  • Overall cost effective and low maintenance database platform.
  • High performance and low tolerance no SQL database.
  • Moving data from and to Cassandra to any relational database platform can be improved.
  • Database event logging can be handled more efficiently.
NoSQL Databases (7)
81.42857142857142%
8.1
Performance
90%
9.0
Availability
90%
9.0
Concurrency
70%
7.0
Security
80%
8.0
Scalability
100%
10.0
Data model flexibility
70%
7.0
Deployment model flexibility
70%
7.0
It's perfect for big data or high volume data to load log files, event files, and streaming or video/image data. It gives really high performance dealing with big data fetches. But when you need to make table joins or you need more of a relational data structure, I do not think Cassandra will fit for that.
  • Cost effective
  • Lower administration effort
  • Continuous data availability
Cassandra handles high traffic transactions more powerfully compared to MongoDB.
Overall, Cassandra is the best DB product in the lot of enterprise eCommerce platforms in regards to performance and cost.
March 16, 2019

Cassandra at scale

Glen Kim | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It’s one of the database platforms we offer to the development community in our organization. We have various selections when it comes to databases including DB2, SQL Server, Oracle, and hadoop for data warehousing. Cassandra becomes the choice when developers want to use a highly available NoSQL db.
  • Availability
  • Fast performance
  • Horizontal scalability
  • Memory first
  • Partition based
  • Dealing with tombstone
  • Maintenance/upgrade
  • Compaction and repair
NoSQL Databases (7)
81.42857142857142%
8.1
Performance
100%
10.0
Availability
80%
8.0
Concurrency
80%
8.0
Security
80%
8.0
Scalability
90%
9.0
Data model flexibility
70%
7.0
Deployment model flexibility
70%
7.0
We use it for collecting user preferences on our website which can be quickly reused. It's also well suited for document ID lookup systems. It’s not good for high consistency level of information like account balance in your banking system.
  • High availability, which makes us use the tool
  • Partition key distribution mechanism is well defined
  • Horizontal scalability when needed for high volume days
  • Complex tombstone management
It was packaged with the vendor product we bought. Also, it’s good for high performance transactional systems. I'm part of our NoSQL team and Cassandra quickly became a favorite for developers with agile teams.
Overall, the product is a little hard to deal with when it comes to upgrading as there are always new versions released every quarter. Also, it’s backup and restore processes are still in their baby steps.
100
Uuid lookup for multiple line of business. Session and cookies management. Records tracking system.
100
Java developers, operational suppor team with DBA background. Skills needed to support are dustribued system knowledge, os level administration skills, scripting is a plus and data modeling experiences.
  • Document id lookup system
  • Tracking if internal application usage
  • Session management
  • Fraud Risk system that determines any users might be potential victims
  • Protecting internal uuid exposing to all other systems
  • Document ID lookup system
  • Url smart links
  • Credit reports tracking system
  • Asset management
Yes
Oracle and it was the decision from vendor
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
I was not the decision maker in thus process however I like the easy use of OpsCenter .
Include more pilot groups ie developers to try out different features and do more stress testing.
  • Implemented in-house
  • Third-party professional services
CA and broadcom
Yes
Dev/test/prod and slow rollout when implementing in prod.
  • Too many nodes to handle
  • Upgrade can be difficult when you have too many clusters with too quick changes on versioning
No
No
Our budget is not ready for this expense.
Sometimes instead giving straight answer, we ‘re getting transfered to talk professional service.
Yes
They recommended to upgrade to next version.
We have license with Datastax so have not dealt with apache.
  • Opscenter
  • Bouncing servers
  • Backup / restore
  • Tombstones
  • Repair process
  • Compaction
It’s great tool but it can be complicated when it comes administration and maintenance.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cassandra as the NoSQL database for our use cases. We stream a lot of API data into this database and rely on the availability it gives us. It has proven to be consistent, which we use to our advantage. Cassandra can distribute data across multiple machines in an app-transparent manner, thus helping us to expand it on demand.
  • Cassandra is a masterless design, hence massively scalable. It is great for applications and use cases that cannot afford to lose data. There is no single point of failure.
  • You can add more nodes to Cassandra to linearly increase your transactions/requests. Also, it has great support across cloud regions and data centers.
  • Cassandra provides features like tunable consistency, data compression and CQL(Cassandra Query Language) which we use.
  • The underlying medium of Cassandra is a key-value store. So when you model your data, it is based on how you would want to query it and not how the data is structured. This results in a repetition of data when storing. Hence, there is no referential integrity - there is no concept of JOIN connections in Cassandra.
  • Data aggregation functions like SUM, MIN, MAX, AVG, and others are very costly even if possible. Hence Ad-hoc query or analysis is difficult.
NoSQL Databases (7)
85.71428571428571%
8.6
Performance
80%
8.0
Availability
100%
10.0
Concurrency
90%
9.0
Security
90%
9.0
Scalability
100%
10.0
Data model flexibility
60%
6.0
Deployment model flexibility
80%
8.0
You should be very clear where you want to use Cassandra because there is no referential integrity (JOIN) in Cassandra. You have to model data based on how you want to query it, hence what use cases it can be used for should be considered carefully.

You can use it where you want to store log or user-behavior types of data. You can use it in heavy-write or time-series data storage. It is good in retail applications for fast product catalog inputs and lookups
  • Highly available and scalable database. Hence highly reliable in the organization for data.
  • Good performance - low latency and great throughput with varying workloads.
  • Maintenance and monitoring need investment and do not work great out of the box.
DynamoDB is good and is also a truly global database as a service on AWS. However, if your organization is not using AWS, then Cassandra will provide a highly scalable and tuneable, consistent database.
Cassandra is also fault-tolerant and good for replication across multiple data centers, which you get in DynamoDB as well.
I would recommend Cassandra DB to those who know their use case very well, as well as know how they are going to store and retrieve data. If you need a guarantee in data storage and retrieval, and a DB that can be linearly grown by adding nodes across availability zones and regions, then this is the database you should choose.
Dhruba Jyoti Nag | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cassandra is a NoSQL database which is used to store a large amount of data quickly. It has a very fast write speed, allowing a large volume of data storage within a small amount of time. It is tunable and can be used to store data. It is more suitable for storing flat data rather than relational data.
  • Write speed. Cassandra is very fast while writing data due to its unique architecture.
  • Tunable consistency - During data replication, consistency can be tuned for a particular data set to be available during an outage.
  • CQL - cassandra query language is a subset of SQL and eases the transition from a more traditional database.
  • Aggregation functions are not very efficient.
  • Ad-hoc queries do not perform well. Queries which were visualized while designing the databases only perform well.
  • Performance is unpredictable.
NoSQL Databases (7)
78.57142857142857%
7.9
Performance
70%
7.0
Availability
90%
9.0
Concurrency
90%
9.0
Security
90%
9.0
Scalability
90%
9.0
Data model flexibility
60%
6.0
Deployment model flexibility
60%
6.0
Cassandra is well suited to storing a large volume of data within a very small period of time. It is relatively fast and the data consistency can be tuned for datasets for custom availability during an outage. It can be interacted with using CQL-- Cassandra query language-- which is similar to SQL, and thus transition is easier. It however performs less during aggregation and querying.
  • Low learning curve
  • Scalable with high performance
  • highly fault tolerant during outage
Cassandra has its own use case. It performs very well as a data store. Data can be written to it at a high rate. It cannot be compared to traditional RDBMS like Oracle, because they all have their own usage. Even MongoDB, which is somewhat similar, cannot be stacked up against Cassandra since it again has its own advantages.
Cassandra has already been integrated into our environment. It has performed well and lived up to the requirements of the highly scalable application which the designers strived to achieve. It has performed admirably as a data store and a huge volume of transaction data is written to Cassandra per second. So it is quite natural to be renewed given its impact.
February 26, 2019

Pretty good software

Feng Cai | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cassandra is used in my organization by my department to handle data that is not in a standard RDMBS format.
  • Runs on commodity hardware
  • Build in fault tolerance
  • Can grow horizontally
  • It is a bit difficult for people that come from the SQL world.
  • Managing anti-entropy repair is still a bit of a challenge.
  • Better security patches.
NoSQL Databases (7)
68.57142857142857%
6.9
Performance
70%
7.0
Availability
70%
7.0
Concurrency
60%
6.0
Security
60%
6.0
Scalability
80%
8.0
Data model flexibility
70%
7.0
Deployment model flexibility
70%
7.0
Nothing beats software that works and charges nothing. It handles data that is not fit for traditional RDBMS. However, not a lot of employees know how to use it efficiently.
  • Nothing beats free
  • People need to be retrained
  • Support model is a bit different
It is good for what it does.
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