By now, you should be familiar with all the nuts and bolts of Cassandra. We have discussed how the pressure to make data stores to web scale inspired a rather not-so-common database mechanism to become mainstream, and how the CAP theorem governs the behavior of such databases. We have seen that Cassandra shines out among its peers. Then, we dipped our toes into the big picture of Cassandra read and write mechanisms. This left us with lots of fancy terms. Furthermore, we looked into the definition of these words, the components that drive Cassandra, and their influence on its behavior.

It is understandable that it may be a lot to take in for someone new to NoSQL systems. It is okay if you do not have complete clarity at this point. As you start working with Cassandra, tweaking it, experimenting with it, and going through the Cassandra mailing list discussions or talks, you will start to come across stuff that you have read in this chapter and it will start to make sense, and perhaps...