Developer Newsletter: A RESTful Microservice Quickstart with Spring Data Cassandra and DataStax Astra

With the many capabilities of the Spring Framework, Java continues to be one of the most popular languages for developing microservices. In this issue, we introduce the Spring Data Starter project that uses Spring Data Cassandra to serve a REST API backed by DataStax Astra. This example shows how easy it is to quickly develop and test microservice applications using Cassandra as a backing datastore.

The README for this repo walks you through the simple steps of creating a free-forever Astra database, deploying the service in a single click using Gitpod, and connecting the running service to your Astra database. Once you’ve got the service initialized, you can interact with the REST API using Swagger, or fork the repo and make your own customizations. Happy coding!

To learn more about what you can do with Spring and Cassandra, tune into the Staying Ahead of the Curve with Spring and Cassandra 4 talk at SpringOne on September 2, 2020, with Alexandre Dutra of DataStax and Mark Paluch of VMware. 

Upcoming Events 

• Does Java have a future in the cloud-native world? - sign up for our InfoQ webinar on August 27 to learn where Java fits in the "new way" of building cloud applications.
• 8 Week Cassandra Workshop series - We have finished our 8 week series! Thank you to the thousands of people who came week after week.You can catch up on all the content on our DataStax Devs YouTube channel.
• Don’t forget: We have a BONUS episode happening on our DataStax Devs YouTube channel this coming Wednesday 26th August (12pm ET/6pm CEST) where we announce the results of the Astrackathon! We will also be running a load of quizzes so don’t miss the chance to get your hands on some of our swag. 
• Expect our next round of workshops to be announced in the coming week. Follow our Eventbrite page so that you are the first to be notified.

Learning Updates 

• Thanks to those of you who have been trying out the refreshed DataStax Academy experience and the hands-on scenarios at the new Developer site and providing feedback to academy@datastax.com.
• One of the most common requests has been for different video resolution options and playback speed controls. We’re excited to share that for the first time we’ve made all of the Academy videos freely available on YouTube to provide another option for consuming the content and maximizing your flexibility.

Community Highlights from Cassandra.Link

• Cassandra & Kubernetes Special Interest Group Update - Learn about how the creators of 5 different K8s operators for Cassandra are teaming up to make the official community based Cassandra Operator for Kubernetes.
• Running Cassandra in Kubernetes: challenges and solutions - Good article covering the basics of K8s, the basics of Cassandra on K8s, and an in depth comparison with pros and cons of the current Kubernetes operators for Cassandra.
• Video - How To Backup And Restore A Cassandra Keyspace In Linux - Useful 20m video tutorial on how to backup & restore a keyspace in Cassandra. 

Burning Questions

Here are some interesting discussions we’ve been following:

• This thread on the Cassandra mailing list raises the interesting case of a tombstone warning when no deletes were being performed. The discussion references the classic Alain Rodriguez post on the Last Pickle blog: About Deletes and Tombstones in Cassandra.
• Andy Goade recently shared some expert advice on community.datastax.com about bulk loading data into DataStax Astra. You can also check out the rest of the expert advice playlist on YouTube. 

Have a suggestion or story to share? We’d love your feedback: developer@datastax.com | @DataStaxDevs.