The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced Cassandra v1.2, the latest version of its big data distributed database. Reputed for its scalability and fault-tolerance, these days we find Apache Cassandra aligned to running in the cloud or partially on-premise in a hybrid data store.

Apache Cassandra VP Jonathan Ellis says that his team has worked to improve support for dense clusters to power multiple terabytes per node. They have also simplified application modelling and improved data cell storage/design/representation. "Systems are able to effortlessly scale petabytes of data," he said.

NOTE: Cassandra v1.2 also marks the release of CQL3 (version 3 of the Cassandra Query Language), intended to simplify application modelling, allow for more powerful mapping, and alleviate design limitations through more natural representation.

The Apache team says that software developers have welcomed the introduction of vnodes to simplify managing clusters while improving performance when adding and rebuilding nodes. v1.2 also includes new performance improvements to lessen the burden on the JVM garbage collector.

"Apache Cassandra continues to be a leading option for scalability and high availability without compromising performance and, with the improvements provided in v1.2, reinforces our commitment to growth while preserving backwards compatibility," added Ellis.