The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced Apache Cassandra v1.1. The highly-scalable, distributed database quickly and reliably handles massive data sets across community machines, large server clusters, and data centers without compromising performance –whether running in the Cloud or partially on-premise in a hybrid data store.
“Apache Cassandra is the leading scalable NoSQL database in terms of production installations –the 1.0 release was a huge milestone,” said Jonathan Ellis, Vice President of Apache Cassandra. “v1.1 improves on that foundation with many features and enhancements that developers and administrators have been asking for.”
Apache Cassandra is rapidly garnering accolades as a best of breed “NoSQL” solution for its ease of use, powerful data model, enterprise-grade reliability, tunable performance, and incremental scalability with no single point of failure. Super-efficient, Cassandra accommodates high query volumes at exceptional speed (sub-millisecond writes) with low latency, and handles petabytes of data across formats and applications in real time.
Apache Cassandra v1.1 features improved caching, revised query language (CQL –Cassandra Query Language– a subset of SQL), storage control, schema/structure, Hadoop integration/output, data directory control, and scalability.
Successfully handling thousands of requests per second, Apache Cassandra is deployed at Adobe, Appscale, Appssavvy, Backupify, Cisco, Clearspring, Cloudtalk, Constant Contact, Digg, Digital River, Expedia, Formspring, IBM, Mahalo.com, Morningstar, Netflix, Openwave, OpenX, Palantir, PBS, Plaxo, Rackspace, Reddit, RockYou, Shazam, SimpleGeo, Spotify, Twitter, Urban Airship, US Government, Walmart Labs, Yakaz, and more.
The largest Cassandra production cluster to date exceeds 300 terabytes of data over 400 machines.
“The v1.1 release shows how rapidly Apache Cassandra has matured. The focus has clearly shifted to usability which is the sign of a solid system. I look forward to getting it into production right away,” said Patrick McFadin, Chief Architect of Hobsons. “With features like Row-level isolation and Composite keys, Apache Cassandra v1.1 is really addressing user driven needs with innovative solutions. Well done to all contributors for making this a great release.”
Jeffrey Abbruzzi, Director of eCommerce Engineering and Operations at Williams-Sonoma, added, “In Apache Cassandra, the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. eCommerce team has found a platform that addresses fundamental challenges we faced in modernizing the foundation of our gift registry systems: the need for top-flight performance, fast and reliable replication among geographically distributed nodes, and lack of any single point of failure. We’re excited about the release and how it can help us continue to evolve the world-class websites of our Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, PBTeen, Pottery Barn Kids, and West Elm brands.”
“We applaud the continued hard work of all of the contributors to the Apache Cassandra project, who continue to make Cassandra the most scalable, easy-to-use, high-performance NoSQL solution available,” said Robin Schumacher, VP of Products for DataStax. “We look forward to including Cassandra v1.1, with all the improvements it brings, into the next version of our DataStax Community Edition, as well as upcoming versions of our DataStax Enterprise Edition.”
Cassandra entered the Apache Incubator in 2009, and graduated as an Apache Top-Level Project (TLP) in February 2010. Apache Cassandra v1.0 was released in October 2011.
Availability and Oversight
Apache Cassandra software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a Project Management Committee (PMC) that guides the Project’s day-to-day operations, community development, and product releases. Apache Cassandra source code, downloads, documentation, mailing lists, and related resources are available at http://cassandra.apache.org/.
