March 2023 Summaries

Apache Cassandra® is emerging as a top database for handling JSON documents. The Stargate project has partnered with Mongoose, an object data mapping library used with MongoDB, to create an end-to-end stack for Mongoose developers that is fully open source. This collaboration aims to provide a developer-friendly JSON idiom using Cassandra together with Stargate, improving the overall developer experience while maintaining reasonable database performance and scale. The new version of Stargate (v2) separates individual APIs into independent services, enhancing operational efficiency and making it easier to develop new API services. By leveraging Cassandra's wide-column nature for "super shredding" data modeling, the JSON API offers a more easily indexable and metadata-preserving solution. This collaboration opens up new possibilities for other developer communities that organize around specific software development idioms, ultimately expanding the number of developers and use cases that Cassandra can address.

DataStax has been awarded the NorthFace ScoreBoard Service Award for the third consecutive year due to exceptional customer satisfaction and loyalty levels. The company received a CSAT score of 98%, a Transaction ScoreBoard Index rating of 4.8 out of 5, a nearly 80% Net Promoter Score, and an NPS SB Index of 4.7 out of 5. DataStax is dedicated to serving developers and enterprises with real-time applications using an open data stack that just works. The company's commitment to customer satisfaction and success has been recognized by customers like Anant Corporation, which relies on DataStax for its real-time data platforms.

DataStax and Delphix have integrated DataStax Enterprise with the Delphix DevOps Data Platform to enable automation in delivering Apache Cassandra databases, reducing slow data provisioning issues. This integration allows customers to have fresh Cassandra databases in minutes for faster digital transformation, cloud adoption, and migration of legacy applications to Cassandra. The virtualized data reduces costs and resources consumption, whether on-premises or in a cloud environment. Delphix automates data provisioning and provides API controls for developers and testers to refresh and rewind data as well as share test environments. This integration also makes it easier to move from legacy databases to Cassandra, optimizing data management processes for businesses.

The Stargate project aims to provide developer-friendly idioms using Apache Cassandra together with its JSON API. This approach leverages data APIs and advanced data modeling to produce data services, making it easier for application developers to balance the considerations of responsiveness, resilience, and scalability. By focusing on purpose-built designs rather than general-purpose ones, Stargate aims to improve developer productivity in the database world, much like higher-level programming languages have done in the past. The JSON API is just the first step in this new paradigm for database development, with more improvements and features expected in the future.

The text discusses modern application architectures and their key characteristics. It highlights the "front door" pattern which involves multiple regions and a global load balancer, providing users control over traffic routing and resilience during unplanned outages. Most applications today use stateless microservices architecture where data is processed in various ways such as reading/writing to databases or third-party services. Real-time AI can be incorporated into existing architectures using inferencing libraries and batch compute clusters, with a natural evolution towards specialized AI services. The text also mentions the importance of choosing between managed and self-managed solutions for different components in an application architecture.

The in-person Cassandra Summit, initially scheduled for March, has been postponed until December 2023 due to travel restrictions. However, DataStax is hosting a free two-hour virtual event called "Cassandra Forward" on March 14th to keep the community connected. The event will feature presentations from experts in the field discussing new features and advancements in Cassandra technology. Notable speakers include Aaron Ploetz from DataStax, Satyajit Thadeshwar from Netflix, Loren Sands-Ramshaw from Temporal, Valeri Karpov, Patrick McFadin, and Davor Bonaci. The event will cover topics such as globally available ACID transactions in Cassandra 5.0, real-time data pipelines for decision-makers and AI apps, combining Temporal's open-source platform with Cassandra's reliability, and future use cases in cloud native and real-time AI/ML applications. Registration is free, and the event will be held at different times to accommodate various time zones.

DataStax has introduced a new way for Cassandra users to improve scalability, ease of development, and security for their clusters with Stargate.io on Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) using the AWS Marketplace. This integration allows users to leverage Amazon's commit and consolidate billing with other cloud services while running Stargate.io as an EKS-managed service on Kubernetes under their existing AWS account at no additional cost. Stargate is a data API gateway in the open source Apache Cassandra ecosystem, offering high-performance gRPC implementation for equivalent performance to native database drivers and handling much of the networking configuration. It deploys independently from your Cassandra cluster, working seamlessly to improve scalability for both driver and API connections. With Stargate, users can integrate applications, services, and functions to Cassandra over both HTTP APIs and Drivers, running new workloads and new application types on the same fast, reliable, and scalable Cassandra foundation in the cloud.

Real-time AI is a game-changer for businesses, offering more accurate predictions and enabling developers to build intelligent applications that drive actions at the exact moment they can make the biggest impact. Unlike traditional AI models based on historical data, real-time AI connects to events as they unfold, providing a highly personalized understanding of consumer behavior, security threats, systems performance, and more. This approach also enables businesses to monitor the performance of ML models in real-time, triggering automatic retraining or swapping in shadow models if necessary. By bringing ML capabilities to the data source, costs associated with data transfers and storage are reduced, and a unified interface is created for training and production. Real-time AI holds immense promise for unlocking the value of AI and creating new applications that drive more accurate business decisions, predictive operations, and engaging consumer experiences.

Apache Cassandra users can now improve scalability, ease of development, and security for their clusters with Stargate.io on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) using the Google Cloud Marketplace. DataStax is expanding integration with major cloud providers, offering a simple, guided experience to enhance Cassandra clusters. Stargate.io is a free service that runs as a GKE-managed service on Kubernetes under your existing Google account. It allows users to leverage Google committed spend and consolidate their bill with other Google Cloud services.