On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Matthew Stump <mrevilgn...@gmail.com> wrote: > Am I crazy to want to switch our server's primary data store from postgres to > cassandra? This is a system used by banks and governments to store crypto > keys which absolutely can not be lost.
Back to original question: in my completely personal opinion, you probably should only consider this if you have a very good reason to have to do it. Cassandra is a very promising system, but given all the development, I would not risk my career by storing absolutely-never-to-be-lost data. One benefit of existing RDBMSs is that they have good data export/backup tools; DBAs that can take over responsibility of managing these aspects and son. One important follow-up questions is this: do you really only need one system? Most succeful large-scale systems I have worked on use two-part division: (a) Management system on RDBMS (oracle etc) -- ACID modifications, backups (b) Delivery system possibly using something else (extensive caching; key/value store; read-only replicas) and with one-way synchronization from (a) to (b), with some delay -- be that via message queue, snapshots, whatever. Main benefit: linear scalability for (b); ACID guarantees for (a). "one system to store it all" view tends to be overvalued nowadays, over "right tool for the job". And for (b) I would absolutely seriously consider Cassandra or other nosql systems. But at least for now, not use it for (a). Just my 2c, -+ Tatu +-
