On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 8:32 AM, Mattmann, Chris A (3980) < chris.a.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> 1. Is Apache Cassandra useful *without* a driver? That is, can > you use the database without a driver to connect to it or in the > real world would your users all have to download at least one > driver in order to use the DB? > The users do need to download a driver--but this is pretty normal for community-driven OSS databases. Besides the Apache projects I listed, PostgreSQL also runs on a community-maintained driver model. > 2. To confirm again, at one point at least the Java driver code > lived in the code-base, and further, at one point, people did > submit some patches to add drivers, but the PMC didn’t want to > maintain that code (and apparently they didn’t want to create > any new PMC members and/or committers to do so) and so thus > people started their own new projects? That right? > I think that summary over-emphasizes the governance aspect at the expense of more important considerations: 0. The very first Cassandra driver interface was Thrift. No Thrift clients were ever part of the Cassandra tree. 1. When we created the CQL protocol, we initially had a Java driver in tree as a reference implementation. 2. But due primarily to the project management issues mentioned by Nate, and secondarily to the governance aspects above, we moved quickly back to the pure community-driven drivers approach that had worked for us before. 2a. While some Apache databases do ship a Java driver in tree, I think that this hinders adoption because it signals to users that non-Java drivers are second-class citizens. (No doubt this is not the *intent* of that decision, but it is a likely consequence nevertheless.) 2b. DataStax saw CQL adoption as a key driver for Cassandra adoption and hence its own success, and hired a team to accelerate the production of drivers for the new CQL protocol. These drivers are Apache licensed and see broad community participation, e.g. with ~70 contributors to the Java driver. 2c. Neither has DataStax "sucked the oxygen out of the room." Lots of non-DataStax drivers exist as well. As Aleksey pointed out earlier, I don't see anyone being harmed by this state of affairs. Cassandra PMC doesn't want to run drivers projects, driver authors don't want to be run by Cassandra PMC, and meanwhile users have Apache licensed drivers that let them be productive with Cassandra.
