Setting up the environment

To get the most out of this chapter, you should prepare your development environment with the following prerequisites:

• Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.7 for your platform, which can be obtained at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html.

• Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or any text editor of your choice.

• Either a local Cassandra installation, or the ability to connect to a remote cluster.

• The DataStax native Java driver for your Cassandra version. If you're using Maven for dependency management, add the following lines of code to your pom.xml file:

  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.datastax.cassandra</groupId>
    <artifactId>cassandra-driver-core</artifactId>
    <version>[version_number]</version>
  </dependency>

If you're using the 1.x driver, you may notice that it has a significant number of dependencies (compared to only four with the 2.x version). For this reason, you should...