Creating Secondary Indexes in Cassandra using Thrift and php - cassandra

I am after any examples of how to create secondary indexes on an new or existing columns in a cassandra db using the Thrift API. The documentation surrounding Thrift is very sparse. Can anyone help a brother out?
A second question that I was wondering is: are there any negatives with using phpcassa as an interface to cassandra. My understanding is that it sits on top of Thrift so are there any performance drawbacks to this scenario?
I'm using Cassandra 0.8, Thrift 2.0, and php 5.2.9.

If you're using phpcassa, you can use SystemManager.create_index().
If you're using the PHP CQL driver it will look like this: http://www.datastax.com/docs/0.8/references/cql#create-index
The performance overhead of phpcassa or the CQL driver is quite small, and is only worth worrying about in the most extreme of circumstances. Generally, the network latency and DB latency for your queries are much larger.

Related

Cassandra vs Druid

I have a use case where i had to analyze real time data using Apache Spark. But i still have a confusion related to choosing data store for my application. The analysis mostly include aggregation, KPI based identity analysis and machine learning tools to predict trends and analysis. Cassandra has good support and large tech companies are already using it in production. But after research i found Druid is faster than Cassandra and is good for OLAP queries but it's results are inconsistent of queries like Count Distinct.
Guys any help related that will be appreciated. Thanks
As your use case is to analyze real time data, I will suggest you to use Druid not Apache Cassandra. For Apache Cassandra, due to its asynchronous master less replication you could have missed the updated data in real time analyzing. On the other hand, Druid is designed for real time analyzing.
Druid Details: http://druid.io/druid.html
Apache Cassandra Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Cassandra

Distributed Data Store - Hazelcast Vs Cassandra

We need to choose between HazelCast Or Cassandra as a distributed data store option. I have worked with cassandra but not with Hazelcast, will like to have a comparative analysis done features like :
Replication
Scalability
Availability
Data Distribution
Performance of reads/writes
Consistency
Will appreciate some help here to help us make the right choice.
The following page and the documents on the page might help on your decision: https://hazelcast.com/use-cases/nosql/apache-cassandra-replacement/
https://db-engines.com/en/system/Cassandra%3BHazelcast

For Cassandra kundera.client.lookup.class options

In order to configure kundera for Cassandra, I notice there are 3 possible options for kundera.client.lookup.class as below
com.impetus.client.cassandra.pelops.PelopsClientFactory
com.impetus.kundera.client.cassandra.dsdriver.DSClientFactory
com.impetus.client.cassandra.thrift.ThriftClientFactory
I am not sure of the Pros and Cons of the above 3 and hence not sure which one to use. Please help me decide
I suggest you to use com.impetus.client.cassandra.thrift.ThriftClientFactory. It is the implementation using just Cassandra's thrift api.
PelopsClient is not in active development.
DSClient is built over datastax driver of cassandra.
There is no real advantage of using either DSClient or ThriftClient.
After further research, I found the following
Don't use PelopsClient as its not in active development as mentioned by #karthik , but more importantly because of the issue reported here
Data Stax Driver is better than thrift client as it over comes few limitations of thrift and they use a different binary protocol specific to cassandra which gives a better performance. Refer Datastax java driver support for Cassandra using Kundera

Spring Cassandra vs. Astyanax performance

I am trying to evaluate the performance of Astyanax and Spring Cassandra. However I did write up a program to measure insertion and read time. It turned out that with large data Astyanax showed up to 600 times faster insertion rate than Spring Cassandra. I believe Spring Cassandra uses datastax driver to communicate with Cassandra though Astyanax uses thrift. Can anyone who have much knowledge about Cassandra client APIs give me more information on their performance analysis? Is anything appearing wrong in my analysis?
Astyanax and the Thrift protocol are deprecated in Cassandra. Netflix, who contributed Astyanax, has ceased all new development in favor of the Datastax Java driver.
SDC* uses the Datastax Java Driver, which uses the latest protocol, and is very fast in the production emvironments I have deployed into.
Without your test, it is impossible to tell you why you are seeing what you are seeing.
Are you testing reads or writes?
Are you using the spring-data-cassandra or spring-cql module?
Are you explicitly setting the ConsistencyLevel in your SDC* tests?
Which methods of the template or repository are you using for your test.
We can perform 10K writes per second PER NODE in a C* cluster using the DS java driver.

Differences betweeen Hector Cassandra and JDBC

I'm currently starting a project that use Cassandra Apache. So I'm interesting in accessing to my database cassandra from Java. For that, I'm using Hector Cassandra. However, I've some doubts about what's the differences between the access via Hector or JDBC Cassandra (specifically this: https://code.google.com/a/apache-extras.org/p/cassandra-jdbc/).
I believe the following (although I not sure if I'm right):
one difference between both could be that are API of different level (I consider that Hector Cassandra is an API of higher-level than JDBC Cassandra)?
in JDBC Cassandra is used CQL for accessing/modifying the database, while Hector Cassandra don't use CQL (only use the methods provided for that).
I'll be thankful if someone can help me and tell me if I'm right/wrong in the previous lines and more differences between both (Hector and JDBC Cassandra).
Thank in advance!
Official Cassandra Java Driver (https://github.com/datastax/java-driver) is probably the best (IMHO, the only) choice for a new project for several reasons:
New features
All other Cassandra clients (Hector, Astyanax, etc) are based on legacy Thrift RPC protocol. RPC "One response per one request" model has severe limitations, for example it doesn't allow processing several requests at the same time in a single connection or streaming large ResultSets.
So, DataStax developed a new protocol that doesn't have RPC limitations. Thrift API won't be getting new features, it's only kept for backward-compatibility. In contrast, Java Driver is actively developed to incorporate the new features of Cassandra 2.0, like conditional updates, batching prepared statements, etc. The overview of new features is here: http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/cql-in-cassandra-2-0
Convenience
In early Cassandra days (0.7) in our company we have used in-house low-level Thrift client. Later on we have used Hector, Pelops and Astyanax in various projects. I can say that the clients based on Java Driver look the most simple and clean to me.
Performance
We have made some performance testing of Cassandra Java Driver vs other clients. In most scenarios the performance is roughly the same. However, there are certain situations when Cassandra Java Driver significantly outperforms other clients due to its asynchronous nature.
Btw, there's a couple of related questions with excellent answers:
Advantages of using cql over thrift
Cassandra Client Java API's
EDIT: When I wrote this, I wasn't aware that Achilles (https://github.com/doanduyhai/Achilles) mentioned in another answer has CQL implementation that works via Java Driver. For the same of completeness I must say that Achilles' DAO on top of CQL might be (or might became one day) viable alternative to plain CQL via Java Driver.
#mol
Why do you restrict to Hector and cassandra-jdbc if you're starting a new project ?
There are many other interesting choices:
Astyanax as Martin mentioned (Thrift & CQL3)
FireBrand (Thrift via Hector)
Achilles I've just developed (CQL3 & Cassandra 2.0 via Java driver core)
Java Driver Core for plain CQL3
Hector is indeed a higher-level API. Internally it will use Cassandra's Thrift API to execute its functions. It will not convert them to equivalent CQL calls. But its API also provides access to CQL. In this case it will pass the CQL (via Thrift) to Cassandra's APIs for CQL.
CQL in Cassandra is a SQL-like language that works via the Cassandra APIs. So it does not provide any additional capability in the use of Cassandra than the APIs but does make it easier at times to use. If you are considering using Hector I would also look at Astyanax which is a newer take on a high-level Java API to Cassandra.
Since you are starting a new project, it is best to start with CQL as Java native driver:
http://www.datastax.com/documentation/developer/java-driver/1.0/webhelp/index.html#common/drivers/introduction/introArchOverview_c.html
Per DataStax, it is 10-15% faster than Thrift APIs, as it uses Binary Protocol.

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