Book excerpt: Imagine what you could do if scalability wasn't a problem. With this hands-on guide, you’ll learn how the Cassandra database management system handles hundreds of terabytes of data while remaining highly available across multiple data centers. This expanded second edition—updated for Cassandra 3.0—provides the technical details and practical examples you need to put this database to work in a production environment. Authors Jeff Carpenter and Eben Hewitt demonstrate the advantages of Cassandra’s non-relational design, with special attention to data modeling. If you’re a developer, DBA, or application architect looking to solve a database scaling issue or future-proof your application, this guide helps you harness Cassandra’s speed and flexibility. Understand Cassandra’s distributed and decentralized structure Use the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) and cqlsh—the CQL shell Create a working data model and compare it with an equivalent relational model Develop sample applications using client drivers for languages including Java, Python, and Node.js Explore cluster topology and learn how nodes exchange data Maintain a high level of performance in your cluster Deploy Cassandra on site, in the Cloud, or with Docker Integrate Cassandra with Spark, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, Solr, and Lucene