Apache Cassandra community looks to the future: Watch for a new release, conference spring 2023

Apache Cassandra, created by Facebook in 2007 and subsequently offered as an Open Source project, is the world’s most scalable database. OSI sponsor DataStax is committed to working with the Open Source community to make Cassandra easier to use, adopt, and extend, building on its decade-plus maturity to solidify its position as the leading database for cloud-native applications.

DataStax delivers a unified stack, available on any cloud, helping enterprises mobilize real-time data and quickly build the smart, high-scale applications required to become data-driven businesses. DataStax is focused on making Cassandra the top choice for modern cloud-native apps and expanding the ecosystem around Cassandra.

Though it’s been in existence for 14-plus years, the large and vibrant community supporting Cassandra has consistently been working to improve it. In fact, Cassandra is used by 90% of the Fortune 100. As the volume of data explodes in this new age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), organizations need a database that has maturity, reliability and scalability. Cassandra fits that bill.

Over the last ten years, data has exploded with trends such as mobile first, user-centric, and big data. With that, new disciplines like analytics and data science have emerged. Real-time transactional data brings value beyond business insights. Data must come back into the application platform, and ML models need to come back into the transactional space. This is the advent of Soft-AI.

The Cassandra community has always prioritized scalability and reliability, and that takes time to do properly. Cassandra has passed through a maturing phase, and the release of 4.0 last year, the newly released 4.1, and the 5.0 release scheduled for Spring 2023, reflect that. The Cassandra community is Open Source at its best as a melting pot for multiple vendors and multiple commercial participants to come together for collaboration with a strong sense of trust and tight Continuous Integration (CI) system. The community has committed to making yearly major releases, and every .0 release will be ready for production for users of every size.

DataStax is tightly connected to Cassandra, offering a cloud service built on Cassandra and Stargate, an Open Source data gateway that gives application developers the freedom to build real-time applications for Cassandra, using the API of their choice. DataStax also works on K8ssandra, a complete Cassandra Kubernetes ecosystem.

Cassandra deploys 50,000 tests for every commit to ensure data does not get lost. Testing and QA was a primary focus for the 4.0 release. The recent GA 4.1 release has new operator safety features and an advanced ecosystem to meet modern data demands. New features of Cassandra 4.1 include:

• Paxos v2
• Guardrails
• CQL (Native Protocol) Rate Limiting
• Client-side Password Hashing
• Partition Denylist
• Lots of CQL improvements
• Pluggability: Memtable Encryption, Authentication

If you’d like to get involved with Cassandra—or just learn more about this powerful, Open Source database, DataStax is hosting Cassandra Forward, a free, online event on March 14. Registration is open now!