3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools Pt. 7

Apache Cassandra is a free and open-source NoSQL database management system that is designed to handle large amounts of data with no single point of failure. In this post, I’m going to highlight 3 different tools that make life easier when using Apache Cassandra.

The first tool that I’m going to talk about is called JanusGraph-Utils. This tool develops a graph database app using JanusGraph. The tutorial projects walks you through how to use OLTP APIs to define a schema, ingest data, and query graph. The prerequisites of running this tool include Installing and configuring JanusGraph, Cassandra, and ElasticSearch. This example porject has the following steps:

1. The user generates Twitter sample schema and data using JanusGraph utilities
2. The user loads schema and imports data in backend servers using JanusGraph utilities
3. The user makes search and update requests in a REST/custom client
4. The client app sends the REST requests to JanusGraph server
5. The JanusGraph server interacts with backend to process and return graph data

Here is a YouTube video that shows a demo of the project. The benefit of this project is that it allows you to combine your distributed database with the power of the graph.

The second tool that I’m going to talk about it called Cassandra-CA-Manager. This is a tool that easily creates and signs Java keystores, for Apache Cassandra, in 3 easy steps.

1. Create a YAML-formatted manifest describing the certificate authority and machine certificates.
2. Run the script with the manifest as its only argument:
3. Copy the resulting trust store and *.kst files to their respective machines, and configure server and/or client encryption accordingly.

The benefit of this tool is that it simply helps automate a task that would rather take up valuable time.

The last tool that I’m going to talk about is called Scylla-Migrator. This tool allows you to migrate data using Spark to Scylla from Cassandra. This tool has 6 steps:

1. First you need to start the environment.
2. Then, launch “cqlsh” in Cassandra’s container and create a keyspace and a table with some data.
3. After, launch “cqlsh” in Scylla’s container and create the destination keyspace and table with the same schema as the source table.
4. Next, edit the “config.yaml” file.
5. Then run “build.sh.F”
6. Finally, launch “spark-submit” in the master’s container and you are good to go.

The benefit of this tool allows you to automate the process of migrating from Cassandra to Scylla, saving you precious time and energy.

We recently launched Cassandra.Link which is a knowledge base that our team created to act as a central POI for all things Apache Cassandra. Our goal with Cassandra.Link was to not only fill the gap of Planet Cassandra but we want to bring the Cassandra community, no matter what variant they use, together. Feel free to reach out if you wish to collaborate with us on this project in any capacity. Lastly, RESTBase also systematically emits metrics about storage and backend requests, such as metric production, to track performance and errors in a micro-service architecture. This is a very neat and compact toolkit to revamp your backend DevOps.

We are a technology company that specializes in building business platforms. If you have any questions about the tools discussed in this post or about any of our services, feel free to send us an email!

1. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 1
2. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 2
3. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 3
4. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 4
5. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 5
6. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 6
7. 3 Useful Apache Cassandra Tools: Part 7

Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash