Apache Releases Cassandra 1.0

The Apache Foundation has officially released version 1.0 of the popular Cassandra open source NoSQL database. "We're consciously signaling that Cassandra is ready for mere mortals," said Apache's Jonathan Ellis. "You don't have to know as much as you did about the nuts and bolts" to operate the database.

In addition to being easier to use, Cassandra 1.0 boasts 400 percent performance improvements on read tasks and 40 percent improvements on write tasks. It also adds data compression and new techniques for better memory utilization.

Cassandra is already used by many companies, including Facebook (its original creator), Cisco, Digg, Netflix, Reddit, Twitter and Walmart. The largest Cassandra production cluster includes 300 TB of data and runs on 300 servers.