Raja Chakraborty, a software Engineer who is climbing the corporate ladder at a breakneck speed and making a mark in the space of technology recommends Apache Cassandra as his go to database system. Spanning over almost two decades Raja’s career in software saw stints at SoCalGas, Wipro, TCS and Cognizant.
At his current engagement with Ticketmaster, Chakraborty along with his team has successfully used Apache Cassandra and nailed demand testing garnering a large demand capacity. The project was taken up to surface real-time availability on the Ticketmaster website. The tix drop was done with high visibility and high traffic scenarios. Raja said, “The objective was that any seat that changed status would be reflected on the seatmap. The technology is used widely in gaming to have compressed data sent over the network. This is one-of-a-kind use of roaring bitmaps in Ticketmaster. The project garnered resounding success with Ticketmaster using it globally across all its 21 markets worldwide. It Increased conversion rate by 115% and saved $100,000 every month”.
A judge at the Globee® Awards for Disruptors, Raja enumerates the multiple advantages of using Apache Cassandra as the database system. Raja said, “One immediate advantage is that Cassandra is open-source and it is designed to handle voluminous data across multiple servers. This distributed NoSQL database system is highly scalable, seamlessly available and has a high threshold for fault tolerance. It can be a go-to database system for handling large datasets and applications that require continuous uptime”.
NoSQL Database:
Speaking about the architecture of Cassandra, Raja said, “It has an interesting architecture. It operates as a distributed system where the data is not concentrated but spread across multiple nodes in a cluster which helps while handling large volumes of data. Cassandra is a NoSQL database; it doesn’t follow the strict schema requirements of relational databases. It also uses a peer-to-peer architecture, where each node in the cluster is equal and directly communicates with other nodes. There is no requirement of a central coordinator. That can be totally eliminated”.
Scoring High on Availability and Scalability
Cassandra is designed for high availability. The architecture is such that it can continue to operate even if certain individual nodes or clusters of data /data centres fail. He mentioned, “The beauty of Cassandra is its seamless continuity. Also, it can be easily scaled up to handle high volumes of data and upsurge of traffic by adding more nodes or existing clusters.
Flexibility, Consistency and Tolerance:
Cassandra uses an eventual consistency model. Speaking about Cassandra’s multiple advantages, Raja said, “In this system, the data is replicated across multiple nodes, and eventually all nodes have a consistent view of the data. And it doesn’t end there, this dataset system has a brilliant distributed architecture and an impeccable replication strategy that enables it to withstand node failures with disruption”. He added, “The laundry list of its advantages continued. It has a flexible schema which allows builders to customize and define their data structures as per their need. It’s not a one size fits all approach”.
The flexibility, consistency, fault tolerance and its NoSQL architecture makes Cassandra a database system for multiple industries. Its varied use cases help lodging quick adoption and a fast-growing
system. Speaking about some of its use cases Chakraborty said, “Platforms like X use Cassandra as they need to store user data, zillions of posts and ancillary information. It is becoming a very popular database with social media. This database system is used for real-time analytics and data processing applications”.
Another industry that is witnessing massive adoption is financial services. He stated, “account information, transaction data to sensitive data, Cassandra is the go-to database system. E-Commerce companies are also using Cassandra for product catalogues, customer data, order information, discount & sales information. Its scalability helps domains like social media, ecommerce and financial services don’t face bottlenecks”.
