Apache Cassandra Changelog #16

In May, we hit our one-year branch and froze the code for the release of Apache Cassandra 4.1. If you would like to demo the new release for non-production use, a test build of Cassandra 4.1-alpha1 was approved on 27 May.

Please read the release notes and let us know if you encounter any problems.

Please note that APIs may change and not all tests in CI are fixed/stable during our alpha releases. For more information on our release lifecycle and quality requirements please read the wiki page.

The latest release of Apache Cassandra is 4.0.4 (pgp, sha256, and sha512), which was released on 14 May 2022.

Please read the 4.0.4 release notes and let us know if you encounter any problems.

We also had bug fix releases for both the 3.11 series (3.11.13, pgp, sha256, sha512) and 3.0 series (3.0.27, pgp, sha256, sha512) that were released on the same day as 4.0.4.

Please read the release notes for 3.11.13 and 3.0.27 and let us know if you encounter any problems.

Note: For this release cycle only, we will continue to support Cassandra 3.0 as well as the latest patch versions of 3.11, 4.0 and 4.1. See Behind the Scenes of an Apache Cassandra Release for more details.

See the download section for the latest stable and older supported versions of source and binary distributions.

To stay up-to-date, we recommend joining the Cassandra mailing lists.

Now that we have hit our one-year branch and froze the code for the release of Apache Cassandra 4.1, expect to see more blogs and emails over the coming weeks about Cassandra 4.1 and why you should be excited. (In fact, you can read about the new Guardrails Framework and new security features on the blog now.)

We are excited to announce the second annual Apache Cassandra World Party (CWP) on Wednesday, July 20, 2022. We will be following the fun and lightning-fast format from last year’s party. Speakers have five minutes and five slides that auto-advance every minute. You can read about the details here.

You can submit your talks until June 17 at 11.59 pm UTC. We will also be posting more details on the Cassandra blog in coming weeks.

Patrick McFadin has kickstarted a monthly Cassandra marketing meeting. As we get closer to the release of Cassandra 4.1, meetings are likely to become more frequent to organize such things as the Cassandra World Party (see above). You can catch up on what is being planned here.

The CFP for the 2-day Cassandra track at ApacheCon North America has closed, but for those comfortable with traveling, you can register for the event which will take place between October 3-6 at the Sheraton Hotel, New Orleans.

For anyone who wants to attend but can’t for financial reasons, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is supporting both committers and non-committers with travel assistance this year. To apply you need to be involved in either ASF projects or open source projects in general. Visit the TAC website for more information. The closing date for applications is 1 July 2022.

If you are still not sure about attending, here’s what Claude Warren, a community member, had to say: “Do it! There are so many things I could say about how things look like cliffs but end up being curbs, or how great it is to meet people who appreciate the effort you put in, or how the conversations with people after talks can give flight to the most amazing ideas. Attend ApacheCon for the thrills, the camaraderie, for the experience.”

In addition to the Jira queries (mentioned above) for newcomers, we have a number of tickets that are blocking the 4.1 release. Take a look at the list if you think you can help.

The debate about code contributions and style guide, started by Benedict Elliott Smith has continued and covered annotation usage.

Ekaterina Domitrova opened a discussion on the future of JMX and virtual tables as Cassandra has a new YAML format for duration, data storage, and data rate configuration parameters, and there are new JMX methods using the new format in 4.1 features such as the new Guardrails framework.

Do you have a Cassandra case study to share? Email cassandra@constantia.io.