DataStax announced today the general availability of the open source Stargate application programming interface (API) framework for building applications on the Cassandra database.
Ed Anuff, chief product officer at DataStax, said Stargate will make it easier for developers to use de facto standard REST API, GraphQL API, schemaless Document API or JSON to build applications that run on Cassandra.
Previously, developers had to employ a unique set of APIs to build applications for an open source database based on wide-column store architecture. That often resulted in IT teams employing Cassandra only when their applications ran into scaling issues on other platforms, said Anuff.
Stargate will now make it possible for developers to use APIs they already know to build applications that are deployed initially on Cassandra. That, Anuff said, should reduce the headaches that are encountered whenever an organization is required to move an application from one database to another.
Stargate is available for download via the Astra cloud database service, a managed instance of Cassandra provided by DataStax. Initially previewed last summer, Stargate also makes it possible to store JSON objects in Astra without any upfront modeling required to more easily prototype applications without having to pre-define schema and queries.
DataStax is clearly trying to make it easier for developers to both build applications for Cassandra and move them if required. Many developers tend to embrace document databases early on simply because they tend to be more accessible and don’t typically require a database administrator to deploy and manage. As those applications start to scale, however, it’s not uncommon for developers to have to rehost them on another platform.
In general, Anuff said database management is finally starting to be incorporated into a larger set of DevOps processes within many IT organizations. At the same time, traditional DBAs are migrating into DataOps or CloudOps engineering roles that have been created to manage data across a wide range of data stores. The days when DBAs typically identified themselves with a single type of database platform are now largely over, he said, noting IT organizations are instead moving to models where data is made available as a service regardless of where it is stored via standard APIs.
DataStax is making a case for using Cassandra as the foundation for data services because of the platform’s ability to scale those services over time.
It’s hard to say how the database platform wars will ultimately play out. Many IT teams routinely make use of a wide range of databases and data stores. Nevertheless, there is now a lot more pressure to reduce the total cost of IT, which may lead more organizations to rationalize the number and types of database platform they support.
Regardless of the database platform selected, the way data is accessed in the enterprise has utterly changed. The challenge now is conforming the processes employed to build and deploy applications to the way data is now managed.
