Quest Adds Apache Cassandra to Toad for Cloud Databases 
Quest Software is adding support for Apache Cassandra to its Toad for Cloud Databases, a data access and management tool for non-relational data stored in cloud (NoSQL) databases. Quest adds Cassandra to its beta software alongside Amazon SimpleDB, Microsoft Azure Table Services, Apache HBase, and Open Database Connectivity-enabled relational database.
Quest Software is adding Apache Cassandra to its beta program for Toad for Cloud Databases, a data access and management tool for non-relational data stored in cloud databases (also known as NoSQL databases).
The move follows a technology alliance between Quest and Riptano, a leading provider of scalable, high-performance solutions for enterprise use of Apache Cassandra. Under the pact, Quest and Riptano will investigate tools for monitoring, diagnostics and data movement between relational databases and Cassandra that would provide multi-data center replication. Depending on the companies’ research findings, plans to develop such tools could be in the works for 2011.
The Quest-Riptano alliance will also help educate enterprises about the use of NoSQL databases. To find out more about such efforts, and on-going enterprise adoption of NoSQL and cloud databases, Integration Developer News spoke with executives from both firms.
Christian Hasker, director of product management for Quest Software’s database business told IDN that Quest’s Toad for Cloud Databases is designed to reduce the learning curve for database and application professionals.
Toad for Cloud databases let users “unlock data stored in NoSQL databases for cloud,” using either conventional SQL language or Toad’s visual query and data access capabilities, Hasker said. The approach allows users to start with NoSQL from just where they are; query and report on non-relational data; migrate data in both cloud and RDBMs from one to the other; and even create queries that combine their on-premise and cloud data.
At Riptano, CEO and co-founder Matt Pfeil is seeing growing and wide interest in Cassandra.
“We’re seeing companies use Cassandra that have databases as small as a few gigabytes to as large as tens or hundreds of terabytes [and] deployments as small as two machines all the way to hundreds of Cassandra nodes,” Pfeil told IDN. “Our customers tell us that one of the main reasons they are interested in Cassandra is because it scales. Regardless of how much or how little data they have, developers are choosing Cassandra because they know it will keep up with their database needs.”
Attesting to broad and growing interest in cloud databases, Hasker told IDN he’s seeing three distinct user profiles among his Toad for Cloud Database customers.
“The first is application developers who need an easy way to get data into Cassandra for testing which, right now, is a painful process. Toad for Cloud Databases makes that very easy,” Hasker said. “Second, as organizations start to put critical data into Cassandra, data analysts will need to query and report on that data. For an SQL user, accessing that data is not trivial nor is it familiar. Toad for Cloud empowers users to not only quickly and easily access the NoSQL data, but also accomplish the very common need of joining that data with other systems, including traditional RBDMS’s.”
Alongside these two profiles, Hasker is also seeing a third trend -- adoption among traditional RDBMS professionals looking to get started with Cassandra.
“We’ve heard first hand how businesses are already taking advantage of Cassandra to improve the economics of database scaling, especially across multiple data centers,” Hasker said.
So, with the stars aligning for rapid enterprise uptake in cloud and NoSQL databases, how do the executives think they can continue to push the puck forward?
“Riptano is helping with adoption in several ways. We’re helping the open source community by building documentation to ease adoption of Cassandra. We’re also contributing software to the community to make developers’ lives easier,” Pfeil told IDN.
Quest’s Hasker added, “We’re collaborating with Riptano to expand our efforts around Cassandra, and look forward to identifying and building new tools to help increase adoption and reduce the learning curve associated with adopting this platform.”
Another key opportunity, Hasker said, will likely be the ability to integrate and/or transfer data between Oracle and NoSQL. “There is interest and a need for high-speed data transfer between Oracle and Hadoop, and we believe the same or greater need will exist for Cassandra,” Hasker said.
"We’ve heard first hand how businesses are already taking advantage of [Apache] Cassandra to improve the economics of database scaling, especially across multiple data centers,”
Christian Hasker,
Director of Product Management
Quest Software
Outside the lab, both executives also see the need for further enterprise education. As an example, Riptano hosted the industry’s first Cassandra Summit in San Francisco to educate attendees on Cassandra from several angles. Videos from the Cassandra Summit are available at riptano.com. Both companies are also contributors to CloudDBPedia.com, a new online knowledgebase for education and training on NoSQL.
Hasker also said Quest plans to continue to embrace Apache projects beyond Cassandra. “We already offer support for Apache HBase in Toad for Cloud Databases, and have announced that we’ll support Hive in a later release as well. Ora-Oop, a tool that will support the Apache Hadoop project, is also in the works and was announced in June,” he said.
