CONCEPT3_What are DataStax Astra and Stargate

📚 What are DataStax Astra and Stargate

Reading time: ~5 minutes

If you are already familiar with DataStax Astra and Stargate and just want to move on to the next exercise go to next section => Set environment variables in your application. Otherwise, read on.

We will cover:

Introduction to Astra
Introduction to Stargate
Want to know More

1. Introduction to Astra

NoSQL Database Apache Cassandra as-a-service + DevTools

Sources Astra Documentation

DataStax Astra, built on the best distribution of Apache Cassandra™, provides the ability to develop and deploy data-driven applications with a cloud-native service, without the hassles of database and infrastructure administration. By automating tuning and configuration, DataStax Astra radically simplifies database operations.

2. Introduction to STARGATE

Data Gateway providing REST + GraphQL = Included in ASTRA

Sources Stargate Documentation

Developers...

Do you like learning query languages (CQL, N1QL, GQL, cypher, gremlin….) No. Save my JSON, give it to me back when I need it ORM / Spring Data are so popular nowadays
Do you care about how your data is stored? Physical data model part of the interface…yikes. Create structures based on queries
Do you like installing and running Databases locally, especially distributed databases, especially with datasets and integration tests?

Operators and Databases Administrators…

Do you allow developers to execute direct queries against your database?
Do you like opening port ranges like 0-65536 to allow communications with applications, especially in the cloud?
Do you like creating dedicated projects and hiring people just to create APIs to expose an existing treatment? (digital transformation FTW)

Stargate is a framework used to customize all aspects of data access. It is deployed between client applications and a database to provide an abstraction layer that can be used to shape your data access to fit your application’s needs.