noob question (strategy)

[Terence Kearns]

Okay so I want to build a new app, and I have decided that AppScale is the way to go.

I'm choosing which language and storage technology I want to use.

So far I like the GO language and I like Apache Cassandra.

Are they a good match?

I'm doing the basic training for Cassandra at
https://academy.datastax.com/courses/ds201-foundations-apache-cassandra

and I notice their DRIVERS don't include the GO language.

Is this going to be a problem?

[chris....@appscale.com]

Hi Terence,

That's great that you're interested in AppScale. Most people that use AppScale use the default App Engine APIs that it provides.

If you plan on using AppScale's default datastore, you won't need a Go driver for Cassandra. The datastore is an abstraction layer written in Python that will interact with Cassandra for you. Google's App Engine documentation describes how to use the datastore api: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/go/datastore/creating-entities.

If you need your Go application to interact with Cassandra directly, then you will need either a driver or some library that uses Cassandra's thrift interface. That would be an unusual use case though, and it would be a departure from the App Engine model.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

-Chris

[Terence Kearns]

Oh okay, cool.

Thanks for answering my question and thanks for the link.

I noticed the google documentation doesn't say anything about data modeling considerations. I guess I still need to consult Cassandra training for modeling considerations seeing as AppScale uses Cassandra by default?

I plan on using this to learn...
https://academy.datastax.com/courses/ds220-data-modeling
I just want to make sure I am not wasting my time

Thanks again.

[chris....@appscale.com]

It's probably not a waste of time, but it may go into more Cassandra-specific detail than necessary for modeling an App Engine application.

[Terence Kearns]

Okay cool. I'm completing the basics course even though it's mostly taken care of by AppScale.

AppScale still lets me configure my cassandra.yaml file right? so I can set things like Replication Factor and and Snitches?

[chris....@appscale.com]

Yes, the easiest way to set the replication factor is by defining the 'n' key in your AppScalefile. That will set the replication factor (using SimpleStrategy) for the keyspace that AppScale creates.

Changes to the cassandra.yaml file are also possible. Just modify this file, and AppScale will copy it in to the configuration directory before starting Cassandra.