What's new in Apache Cassandra 3.0

An overview of new features in the Apache Cassandra 3.0.

Note: Cassandra is now releasing on a tick-tock schedule.

The latest version of Apache Cassandra 3.0 is 3.0.9.

The CHANGES.txt describes the changes in detail. You can view all version changes by branch or tag in the drop-down list on the changes page.

New features released in Cassandra 3.0

Storage engine refactored	The Storage Engine has been refactored.
Materialized Views	Materialized views handle automated server-side denormalization, with consistency between base and view data.
*Operations improvements*
Addition of MAX_WINDOW_SIZE_SECONDS to DTCS compaction settings	Allow DTCS compaction governance based on maximum window size rather than SSTable age.
File-based Hint Storage and Improved Replay	Hints are now stored in files and replay is improved.
Default garbage collector is changed to G1	Default garbage collector is changed from Concurrent-Mark-Sweep (CMS) to G1. G1 performance is better for nodes with heap size of 4GB or greater.
Changed syntax for CREATE TABLE compression options	Made the compression options more consistent for `CREATE TABLE`.
Add nodetool command to force blocking batchlog replay	BatchlogManager can force batchlog replay using nodetool.
Nodetool over SSL	Nodetool can connect using SSL like cqlsh.
New nodetool options for hinted handoffs	Nodetool options `disablehintsfordc` and `enablehintsfordc` added. to selectively disable or enable hinted handoffs for a datacenter.
nodetool stop	Nodetool option added to stop compactions.
*Other notable changes*
Requires Java 8	Java 8 is now required.
nodetool cfstats and nodetool cfhistograms renamed	Renamed `nodetool cfstats` to `nodetool tablestats`. Renamed `nodetool cfhistograms` to `nodetool tablehistograms`.
Native protocol v1 and v2 are dropped	Native protocol v1 and v2 are dropped in Cassandra 3.0.
DataStax AMI does not install Cassandra 3.0 or 3.x	You can install Cassandra 2.1 and earlier versions on Amazon EC2 using the DataStax AMI (Amazon Machine Image) as described in the AMI documentation for Cassandra 2.1. To install Cassandra 3.0 and later on Amazon EC2, use a trusted AMI for your platform and the appropriate install method for that platform.