Getting Started With Apache Cassandra

The lecture explains how snitch lets Cassandra nodes learn cluster topology across data centers and racks, and reviews simple, property file, and gossiping property files snitch types.

Explore Cassandra’s distributed architecture, including snitch, data distribution, replication, and virtual nodes, then answer a pop quiz on Murmur3 partitioner and flexible node addition in clusters.

Learn how to download Apache Cassandra from multiple sources, choose between tarball and community or enterprise options, and locate the downloaded file in your virtual machine.

Install and verify Oracle JDK 7 to run Cassandra, verify with java -version, noting Cassandra 2.0 requires JDK 7 and works best with Oracle JDK rather than OpenJDK.

Create the data and log directories at /var/lib/cassandra and /var/log/cassandra, then set permissions so cassandra can write to both.

Learn to start and stop Cassandra by running the bin/cassandra script, switch between background and foreground modes, locate the bin directory, and use a process ID to terminate the server.

Explore how Cassandra uses keyspaces to group tables within a cluster. Describe keyspaces to view system and system traces, and inspect tables inside each keyspace.

Explore how to create a Cassandra keyspace that spans multiple data centers, and understand network topology strategy, keyspace name case sensitivity with quotes, and per-data-center replication factors.

Learn how to create a table in Cassandra with the create table command, use a keyspace, and name it activity in the home_security keyspace, while learning how to define columns.

Identify the partition key in a primary key by the value before the first comma. Learn how the partitioner hashes this key to determine the target node and partition.

Practice creating a table with the create table command, define columns and data types, and identify the primary key, partition key, and descending clustering order in a Cassandra pop quiz.

Learn how Cassandra stores data: a primary key defines uniqueness, a partition key groups rows into a single internal storage row, viewed through CQL and Cassandra Seelye.

Understand that Cassandra secondary indexes let where clauses reference non primary columns but do not increase the speed of queries; consider a handmade table for queries like homes in state.

Create a secondary index in Apache Cassandra using the create index command, naming the index on the activity table's code_use column to enable querying by home ID and code.

Define a composite partition key combining vehicle_id and date to bound partitions. Create a location table with time, latitude, longitude, and a key using (vehicle_id, date) and time, time descending.

Set up your Java development environment using Eclipse, Oracle JDK, Maven, and Tomcat to build a vehicle tracker application, including creating a dynamic web project and configuring a Tomcat runtime.

Learn to acquire the DataStax Java driver jar files using either the binary tarball or Maven, and ensure Cassandra nodes have start_native_transport set to true.

In Eclipse, convert your project to a Maven project, add the DataStax Cassandra driver under dependencies with group id, artifact id, and version to fetch jars from Maven repository.

Build a web interface to query Cassandra by vehicle ID and date, display results in a dynamic form, and optionally visualize location on a Google map.

Learn to build a second Cassandra client app with Maven, configure cluster and session, and query home and activity data by home id.

Explore how to delete data in Cassandra using delete, truncate, and drop commands, including removing column values, rows, tables, and keyspaces.