Getting started

The first steps to building an application for use with Apache Cassandra are both important to get right, and easy to get wrong. Here we will cover some fundamental questions about whether or not Cassandra is even the correct data store for the application in question.

But first, let's start with an overview of what the wrong path looks like.

The path to failure

As most developers are used to working with relational databases, the typical path to failure starts with a data model that closely resembles one found in a RDBMS. A loading job is then written, which only succeeds in crashing their nodes every couple of hours.

Finally, once the data is there, they build their application around a RDBMS framework...