When you need scalability and high availability without compromising performance, perhaps Apache Cassandra is the best choice. This open source NoSQL database got its 1.0 release stage last October, and will be getting the Version 1.2 in this October. Currently used by several big organizations, such as Disney, eBay, and Netflix, Cassandra 1.2 will have several enhanced features like r concurrent schema change and virtual node capabilities.

“Version 1.2 of Cassandra, eyed for an October release, is slated to offer concurrent schema change and virtual node capabilities, as well as JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) deployment support,” Ellis said. “With concurrent schema changes, multiple clients can issue schema changes at the same time and they will be merged across a cluster safely. Virtual nodes will enable a full cluster to parallelize certain operations, providing improved speed in operations such as adding or replacing a node,” he added.

We’ll also be able to see Cassandra Query Language (CQL) 3 in the upcoming version. Though it will not have full backward-compatibility with CQL 2, users still will be able to use CQL 2 and move to CQL 3 when building new parts of their application.

Besides, we have got one more development pertinent to Cassandra’s commercial leader – DataStax, which has recently partnered with Gazzang. The partnership is aimed at helping customers meet data security compliance regulations and guard against unauthorized data access or malicious attack, while comprehensively managing their Big Data.

“Gazzang gives DataStax customers peace of mind, knowing the sensitive information they use to run massive-scale queries and analytics is secure,” said Larry Warnock, president and CEO of Gazzang. “Because zNcrypt is optimized for cloud and big data environments, there is no tradeoff between security and performance. This means DataStax Enterprise customers can have the best of both worlds: fast data and maximum protection.”

With the Cassandra conference just falling behind us, and #theCube having interviewed many people dealing with the products that integrate it, it’s a good bet that an upgrade will be seen as a big step.