Connect to Astra Managed Clusters with the Apache Cassandra Spark Connector

Using the comprehensive processing features in Apache Spark™ can boost your data analysis and processing capabilities with Astra Managed Clusters.

Apache Spark with Scala in spark-shell seamlessly integrates with tables in your Astra Managed Cluster databases for advanced data analysis. You can run SQL and CQL queries to interact with your data. You can also use Spark DataFrames and RDDs for sophisticated data manipulation and analysis.

Managed Cluster databases are compatible with the Apache Cassandra Spark Connector, which allows for better support of container orchestration platforms.

Prerequisites

An active Managed Cluster database
An application token and Secure Connect Bundle (SCB) for your database

Prepare packages and dependencies

This guide recommends the latest version of the Spark Connector. If you want to use a different version, you must use Spark, Java, and Scala versions compatible with your chosen connector version. For more information, see Spark Connector version compatibility.

Download Apache Spark pre-built for Apache Hadoop® and Scala. DataStax recommends the latest version.
Download the latest cassandra-spark-connector package .
Install Java version 8 or later, and then set it as the default Java version.
Install Scala version 2.12 or 2.13.

Connect to Astra DB with Spark

Extract the Apache Spark package into a directory.

The following steps use SPARK_HOME as a placeholder for the path to your Spark directory.
Add the following lines to the end of the spark-defaults.conf file located at SPARK_HOME/conf/spark-defaults.conf. If no such file exists, look for a template in the SPARK_HOME/conf directory.
```
spark.files PATH/TO/SCB/DIR
spark.cassandra.connection.config.cloud.path SCB.zip
spark.cassandra.auth.username token
spark.cassandra.auth.password APPLICATION_TOKEN
spark.dse.continuousPagingEnabled false
```
Replace the following:
- PATH/TO/SCB/DIR: The path to the directory where you stored your database’s SCB.
- SCB.zip: The name of your SCB zip file.
- APPLICATION_TOKEN: Your application token.

Launch spark-shell from the root directory of your Spark installation:

bin/spark-shell --packages com.datastax.spark:spark-cassandra-connector_SCALA_VERSION:CONNECTOR_VERSION

Replace SCALA_VERSION with your Scala version, and replace CONNECTOR_VERSION with your Spark Connector version.

Result

Using Spark's default log4j profile: org/apache/spark/log4j-defaults.properties
Setting default log level to "WARN".
To adjust logging level use sc.setLogLevel(newLevel). For SparkR, use setLogLevel(newLevel).
Spark context Web UI available at http://localhost:4040
Spark context available as 'sc' (master = local[*], app id = local-1608781805157).
Spark session available as 'spark'.
Welcome to
      ____              __
     / __/__  ___ _____/ /__
    _\ \/ _ \/ _ `/ __/  '_/
   /___/ .__/\_,_/_/ /_/\_\   version 3.0.1
      /_/
Using Scala version 2.12.10 (OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM, Java 11.0.9.1)
Type in expressions to have them evaluated.
Type :help for more information.
scala>

Run the following Scala commands to connect Spark to your database through the connector:

import com.datastax.spark.connector._
import org.apache.spark.sql.cassandra._
spark.read.cassandraFormat("tables", "system_schema").load().count()

Result

scala> import com.datastax.spark.connector._
import com.datastax.spark.connector._
scala> import org.apache.spark.sql.cassandra._
import org.apache.spark.sql.cassandra._
scala> spark.read.cassandraFormat("tables", "system_schema").load().count()
res0: Long = 25
scala> :quit

Next steps

To learn more about using the Spark Connector, see the Apache Cassandra Spark Connector documentation.

Connect to Astra Managed Clusters with the Apache Cassandra Spark Connector

Prerequisites

Prepare packages and dependencies

Connect to Astra DB with Spark

Next steps

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