Last night we held a talk with our very own Victor Anjos, on the topic of Data Modeling with Cassandra (sponsored by DataStax). After some lively conversation and networking, we settled in with our sushi and the talk began. The purpose of the meeting was to go through real-life Cassandra data modeling exercises, giving attendees the chance to participate in designing a service. The team chose to use basic “LinkedIn” like functionality as the “real life” example, since it’s a service familiar to everyone.
@VictorFAnjos has begun the #Cassandra talk, starting on suggestions from the crowd. pic.twitter.com/OphAw363RB
— Viafoura (@viafoura) August 6, 2014
Victor began the night by brainstorming with the group on which data entities would be required to build something like LinkedIn from scratch. They picked Job Postings as the focus of discussion and began by describing the type of information available in a Job Posting. To figure out the database design, the group moved into a discussion about the types of searches that would need to be done against that data.
There’s a lively audience discussion on #Cassandra and how to sort various data fields. pic.twitter.com/UNiHvV2yJM
— Viafoura (@viafoura) August 6, 2014
The group engaged in friendly debates over the best ratio of read to write information. After identifying a set of required searches, Victor led the team into a discussion on how to model the data to facilitate these searches (how to query, primary keys, cluster keys and query patterns using truth tables).
@VictorFAnjos leads a voracious Q&A about #Cassandra, the participation is awesome! pic.twitter.com/p478lqlUDD
— Viafoura (@viafoura) August 7, 2014
A lively Q&A followed, getting participation from all and a healthy dose of networking shortly afterwards. People from all kinds of industries came out, learned a lot and got involved. We were happy to be a part of it, and are grateful to Datastax for its sponsorship!
For more updates, follow @DataStax and @viafoura on Twitter and be sure to check out the Cassandra meetup group.