In this chapter, we discussed many aspects of Apache Cassandra. Some concepts may not have been directly about the Cassandra database, but concepts that influenced its design and use. These topics included Brewer's CAP theorem data-distribution and- partitioning; Cassandra's read and write paths; how data is stored on-disk; inner workings of components such as the snitch, tombstones, and failure-detection; and an overview of the delivered security features.
This chapter was designed to give you the necessary background to understand the remaining chapters. Apache Cassandra was architected to work the way it does for certain reasons. Understanding why will help you to provide effective configuration, build high-performing data models, and design applications that run without bottlenecks. In the next chapter, we will discuss and explore CQL, and explain why it...