Q&A with Nadav Harel on Project Alternator, our DynamoDB-compatible API

Nadav Harel, a ScyllaDB Distinguished Engineer, discusses his involvement with Project Alternator, a DynamoDB-compatible API developed by ScyllaDB. Harel highlights his journey from developing a Hebrew spell-checker to working on ScyllaDB, recounting the transition from OSv to rewriting Cassandra for performance improvements. He shares his satisfaction in contributing to various ScyllaDB components, including Seastar documentation, and leading the development of Alternator to enable seamless migration from DynamoDB to ScyllaDB. Harel emphasizes the project's collaborative nature, especially his partnership with Piotr Sarna, and the significance of test-first development using pytest. He notes that while Alternator supports many features, ongoing work is needed to implement the full DynamoDB API, including native support for conditional updates. At the ScyllaDB Summit, attendees will have the opportunity to experience the beta implementation of Alternator on ScyllaDB Cloud.