JVM GC Jargon The jargon used to describe GC algorithms can get confusing. This section describes commonly used terms and their meaning. Live set – The number of live objects in a heap. The live set determines the amount of work and GC pause times for the garbage collector. Modern GC’s are able to de-link […]
Weak Generational Hypothesis The weak generational hypothesis has had a profound impact on the JVM’s heaps layout. Understanding the weak generational hypothesis is essential in order to understand various GC algorithms and approaches. The Weak Generational Hypothesis states that most objects die young. In other words, most objects created will be garbage collected very quickly. […]
GC Mark, Sweep, and Compact Basics The Mark and Sweep algorithm is the basis for garbage collection in Java. Although the actual algorithms used by the JVM are considerably more complex, the mark and sweep algorithm forms the basis of garbage collection in the JVM and must be understood. As you might have guessed, there […]
Java is a popular language for business and enterprise computing. Java and the JVM have enjoyed enormous success over the last two decades. Java was initially considered a slow language (late 90’s). That changed with the introduction of the HotSpot virtual machine in April 99. HotSpot improved performance via “just in time” compilation and adaptive optimisation. Since […]
The CAP theorem is a tool used to makes system designers aware of trade-offs while designing networked shared-data systems. CAP has influenced the design of many distributed data systems. It made designers aware of a wide range of tradeoff to consider while designing distributed data systems. Over the year the CAP theorem has been widely […]
Sometimes an Apache Cassandra cluster can end up in an unbalanced state. An unbalanced state is where data is unevenly distributed across a cluster or locally configured data directories. There are a number of reasons this can happen. In this blog post, I will cover two basics reasons this might happen. A cluster can end up […]
A recent question in the Apache Cassandra mailing list triggered this blog post. The question revolved around events that trigger a memtable flush. Understanding the root cause of a memtable flush is essential to get a better understanding of Apache Cassandra. Another question that frequently crops up is the size of an SSTable as a result of […]
Apache Cassandra and the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) have evolved over the past couple of years. Key improvements include: Significant storage engine improvements Introduction of SSTable Attached Secondary Index i.e SASI Indexes Materialized views Simple role based authentication This post is an updated to “A Practical Introduction to Cassandra Query Language”. The tutorial will concentrate […]
This tutorial outlines steps to install and configure Apache Cassandra using Docker. Docker provides an easy way to create an Apache Cassandra cluster. Using Docker we will get an Apache Cassandra cluster up and running in minutes
Designing an effective data model is imperative to scale any application. This is true both in the relational and non relational world. Data modelling in Apache Cassandra is no different than any relational database. It requires a good understanding of the target domain and usage patterns within the domain. A deep understanding of your target […]