Astyanax over Java Driver

Highly recommended readings

• Astyanax blog post in Dec 2013 - This describes what the integration between Astyanax and Java-Driver is all about.
• Schema in Cassandra 1.1 - decent intro to schema basics, dynamic columns, clustering keys etc
• What's new in CQL3 - info on how CQL3 deals with composite keys
• CQL3 for cassandra experts - info on how rows are structured at the storage level and how rows and columns are transposed to CQL3 rows.
• Thrift to CQL3 - another guide on how to use dynamic columns

Overall, to summarize the Astyanax post - Java-Driver does some of the heavy lifting like load balancing and connection pooling and also provides some neat features such as cursor support and async requests. The astyanax-cql module leverages Java Driver underneath to implement the Astyanax interface and hence can still support your querying needs, but there are some important caveats/changes to consider before using the Astyanax over Java Driver.

How to select the right lib release version.

Start with setting up your keyspace context

Cache the column family definition with your ColumnFamily object

Reads / Queries - how to use PreparedStatements for better performance

Writes / Mutations - how to use PreparedStatements for better performance

Examples

Simple ColumnFamily definition

ColumnFamily with composite columns

Regular flat table style ColumnFamily