Cassandra easy
Apache Cassandra is fundamentally designed as which architectural category of NoSQL database?
- A A standard relational database (RDBMS) optimized for ACID transactions across all tables.
- B A specialized Graph database used for complex relationship traversal.
- C A Wide-Column Store (or Partitioned Row Store) based on the BigTable design pattern.
- D A pure Key-Value store that only supports primary key lookups without secondary indexing.
Answer: C. A Wide-Column Store (or Partitioned Row Store) based on the BigTable design pattern.
Cassandra is a 'Wide-Column Store'. It organizes data into tables with rows and columns, similar to RDBMS, but it stores data across a distributed cluster where each row can have a different set of columns. It combines the 'Column Family' concept from Google's BigTable with the 'Dynamo' distributed system model from Amazon.
One system design question a day, with spaced repetition so the ones you miss come back.
Get the appRelated questions
- In a Cassandra Keyspace, what does a 'Replication Factor of 3' specifically guarantee for your data redundancy?
- Unlike a Leader-Follower architecture (like MySQL or Redis), how does Cassandra maintain high availability within its node cluster?
- Cassandra Query Language (CQL) looks similar to SQL. What is a fundamental SQL feature that CQL does NOT support to ensure distributed performance?
- What is the critical architectural function of the 'Partition Key' in a Cassandra table?
- An extreme financial trading application requires 'Batch' sync for the Commit Log. What is the fundamental throughput limitation introduced by this setting?
- In a cluster with high 'Mutation' (Write) frequency, why is the `Row Cache` almost universally disabled by experts?