Since the beginning of Chapter 1, Getting Up and Running with Cassandra, we have been using cqlsh to execute all queries. Whether it is reading or writing data, changing consistency level, or enabling tracing, cqlsh facilitates performing all these tasks with ease. When developing applications that work with Cassandra, we use various drivers, supported either by DataStax or by the open source community. During the course of this chapter, we will be focusing on the Java driver in particular, which is used widely, and most new changes go into this first. Cqlsh uses the Python driver underneath.
The Java driver is based on CQL3 and Cassandra binary protocol. It uses Netty-based transport, which provides high performance and is optimized for Cassandra. Prior to the Java driver, which is based on native protocol, thrift protocol was more popular. As newer versions of...
