Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Where Did Cassandra Come From?
The Cassandra data store is an open source Apache project available at
ht-
tp://cassandra.apache.org
. Cassandra originated at Facebook in 2007 to solve that company's in-
box search problem, in which they had to deal with large volumes of data in a way that was
difficult to scale with traditional methods. Specifically, the team had requirements to handle huge
volumes of data in the form of message copies, reverse indices of messages, and many random
reads and many simultaneous random writes.
The team was led by Jeff Hammerbacher, with Avinash Lakshman, Karthik Ranganathan, and
Facebook engineer on the Search Team Prashant Malik as key engineers. The code was released
as an open source Google Code project in July 2008. During its tenure as a Google Code project
in 2008, the code was updateable only by Facebook engineers, and little community was built
around it as a result. So in March 2009 it was moved to an Apache Incubator project, and on
February 17, 2010 it was voted into a top-level project.
NOTE
A central paper on Cassandra by Facebook's Lakshman and Malik called “A Decentralized Structured
Storage System” is available at:
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/ladis2009/papers/lakshman-ladis-
Cassandra today presents a kind of paradox: it feels new and radical, and yet it's solidly rooted in
many standard, traditional computer science concepts and maxims that successful predecessors
have already institutionalized. Cassandra is a realist's kind of database; it doesn't depart from the
relational model to be a fun art project or experiment for smart developers. It was created spe-
cifically to solve a real-world problem that existing tools weren't able to solve. It acknowledges
the limitations of prior methods and faces our new world of big data head-on.
HOW DID CASSANDRA GET ITS NAME?
I'm a little surprised how often people ask me where the database got its name. It's not the first thing I
think of when I hear about a project. But it is interesting, and in the case of this database, it's felicitously
meaningful.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Cassandra
was so beautiful that the god Apollo gave her the ability to see the future. But when she refused his
amorous advances, he cursed her such that she would still be able to accurately predict everything that
would happen—but no one would believe her. Cassandra foresaw the destruction of her city of Troy, but
was powerless to stop it. The Cassandra distributed database is named for her. I speculate that it is also
named as kind of a joke on the Oracle at Delphi, another seer for whom a database is named.
