In this article, we will discuss the top 20 Cassandra interview questions and provide detailed answers to help job seekers prepare for their interviews and increase their chances of success.
Cassandra is a popular distributed NoSQL database system used by many organizations for its ability to handle large amounts of data across multiple commodity servers.
As more companies adopt Cassandra, the demand for experts in this database technology is increasing.
To land a job in this field, it is essential for candidates to prepare themselves for interviews by studying common interview questions and understanding the key concepts and features of Cassandra.
1. What is Cassandra?
Cassandra is a distributed NoSQL database system designed for managing large amounts of structured and unstructured data across many commodity servers.
2. What is a key space in Cassandra?
A key space in Cassandra is a namespace that defines the replication strategy and other configuration options for a set of related tables.
3. What is a column family in Cassandra?
A column family in Cassandra is a container for columns that share a similar structure.
4. What is a super column in Cassandra?
A super column in Cassandra is a container for columns that group related data together.
5. What is a cluster in Cassandra?
A cluster in Cassandra is a set of nodes that work together to store and manage data.
6. What is a node in Cassandra?
A node in Cassandra is a single server that is part of a cluster.
7. What is a token in Cassandra?
A token in Cassandra is a value that is assigned to each node in a cluster to determine the range of data that it is responsible for storing.
8. What is a replication factor in Cassandra?
A replication factor in Cassandra is the number of copies of each piece of data that are stored in the cluster for redundancy.
9. What is a partition key in Cassandra?
A partition key in Cassandra is the primary key used to determine the location of a row within a cluster.
10. What is a composite key in Cassandra?
A composite key in Cassandra is a primary key that consists of multiple columns.
11. What is the difference between a partition key and a clustering key in Cassandra?
A partition key in Cassandra determines the location of a row within a cluster, while a clustering key determines the order of the columns within a row.
12. What is a tombstone in Cassandra?
A tombstone in Cassandra is a marker that indicates that a column has been deleted.
13. What is a compaction in Cassandra?
A compaction in Cassandra is the process of merging data files to improve query performance and reduce disk space usage.
14. What is a memtable in Cassandra?
A memtable in Cassandra is an in-memory data structure used to temporarily store updates before they are written to disk.
15. What is a commit log in Cassandra?
A commit log in Cassandra is a file that records updates to the database before they are written to disk.
16. What is a secondary index in Cassandra?
A secondary index in Cassandra is an index on a non-primary key column that allows for efficient querying.
17. What is a materialized view in Cassandra?
A materialized view in Cassandra is a precomputed view of data that is stored separately from the base table for faster querying.
18. What is hinted handoff in Cassandra?
Hinted handoff in Cassandra is a mechanism that allows nodes to temporarily store writes for other nodes that are temporarily unavailable.
19. What is gossip in Cassandra?
Gossip in Cassandra is a communication protocol used by nodes in a cluster to share information about cluster membership and data distribution.
20. What is the difference between a read repair and a hint in Cassandra?
A read repair in Cassandra is a mechanism that automatically repairs inconsistencies in data during a read operation, while a hint is a mechanism for temporarily storing writes that failed due to node unavailability.
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