Understanding the Guarantees, Limitations, and Tradeoffs of Cassandra and Materialized Views

Cassandra 3.0 introduces Materialized Views, a feature designed for efficient querying of denormalized data on high cardinality columns. Unlike secondary indexes that can become inefficient due to fan-out across all nodes, materialized views allow direct lookups and hold other denormalized data from the base table. However, it's crucial to understand the design and tradeoffs associated with this feature. Cassandra offers highly available, eventually consistent materialized views, but data safety depends on factors like replication factor and consistency level used for writes. Manual maintenance of Materialized Views can lead to inconsistencies between views, so understanding the internal design is essential. The Materialized Views feature aims to address complexities surrounding manual denormalization while offering its own set of guarantees and tradeoffs. Repairs work differently depending on whether the base or view is being repaired, ensuring consistency across replicas.