Book excerpt: Beginning Apache Cassandra Development introduces you to one of the most robust and best-performing NoSQL database platforms on the planet. Apache Cassandra is a document database following the JSON document model. It is specifically designed to manage large amounts of data across many commodity servers without there being any single point of failure. This design approach makes Apache Cassandra a robust and easy-to-implement platform when high availability is needed. Apache Cassandra can be used by developers in Java, PHP, Python, and JavaScript—the primary and most commonly used languages. In Beginning Apache Cassandra Development, author and Cassandra expert Vivek Mishra takes you through using Apache Cassandra from each of these primary languages. Mishra also covers the Cassandra Query Language (CQL), the Apache Cassandra analog to SQL. You'll learn to develop applications sourcing data from Cassandra, query that data, and deliver it at speed to your application's users. Cassandra is one of the leading NoSQL databases, meaning you get unparalleled throughput and performance without the sort of processing overhead that comes with traditional proprietary databases. Beginning Apache Cassandra Development will therefore help you create applications that generate search results quickly, stand up to high levels of demand, scale as your user base grows, ensure operational simplicity, and—not least—provide delightful user experiences.