Overview of supported DataStax drivers

This topic provides an overview of supported DataStax drivers for open-source Apache Cassandra®, DataStax Enterprise (DSE), Hyper-Converged Database (HCD), and Astra DB.

Except as noted below, DataStax officially supports the last twelve months of releases.

Connecting your application to Astra DB might cause connection issues depending on the driver you choose. Although third-party open-source drivers, such as GoCQL, are supported, DataStax strongly recommends using native Astra drivers or DataStax CQL drivers. Third-party open-source drivers might lack features that harden the driver against IP address changes of the coordinators, which can cause frequent connection issues. Connections using third-party open-source drivers, such as GoCQL, over private links with or without custom domains are not officially supported by DataStax.

For more information, see the DataStax Support Policy.

Version compatibility

DataStax drivers work exclusively with the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) version 3 for transactional workloads and support both Fluent and String APIs for DSE Graph workloads. Use these drivers in production applications to pass CQL or DSE Graph statements from the client to a cluster and to retrieve, manipulate, or remove data. The C/C++, C#, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby drivers support Cassandra’s binary protocol.

For DSE 5.1, you can use any DataStax driver that supports Cassandra 3.1. However, to use functionality such as DSE Graph with DSE 5.1 and some later versions, you might need to use DSE-only drivers. To verify compatibility, check the version compatibility for DataStax drivers and DSE-only drivers.

Cassandra, DSE, HCD, and Astra DB drivers

You can use DataStax drivers for Cassandra, DSE, HCD, and Astra DB.

To get started, see Developing applications with Apache Cassandra™ and DataStax Enterprise. This guide contains information about best practices, connecting to clusters, submitting queries with drivers, and handling client and server errors.

Guides Source (GitHub) Version Compatibility Upgrade Quickstart

C++

C++

C++

C++

C++

C#

C# with Graph extension

C#

C#

C#

C#

Java with Graph extension Maven Central

Java

Java

Java

Java

Node.js

Node.js with Graph extension

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js

Node.js

Python

Python Graph extension (optional)

Python

Python

Python

Python

DataStax doesn’t support Java driver version 3.x. For information about upgrading to 4.x, see the Java driver 4.x upgrade guide and the DataStax Support Java driver upgrade article

JDBC and ODBC drivers

To download the DataStax ODBC drivers for Cassandra, DSE, and HCD with CQL connector, see the ODBC/JDBC drivers download page.

The JDBC drivers require access to the DataStax Support Portal. For more information, see the DataStax Support OBDC/JDBC drivers article.

For ODBC driver installation instructions, see the DataStax ODBC install documentation.

Spark Cassandra Connector

DSE Developer Guides Github

Getting started with the Spark Cassandra Connector 6.9 | 6.8 | 5.1

DataStax Spark Cassandra Connector

Legacy drivers

The following drivers are in end-of-life (EOL) or maintenance mode.

PHP and Ruby drivers

The DSE-only PHP and Ruby drivers reached EOL in January 2022, and the OSS PHP and Ruby drivers are in maintenance mode.

DSE-only drivers

Starting in January 2020, DataStax unified the DSE and Cassandra drivers. DSE-only drivers were supported until January 1st, 2022, and they are now end-of-life (EOL).

All new features and functionality are added to the unified DataStax drivers. For more information about the decision to develop unified drivers, see Better Drivers for Cassandra.

For information about the EOL DSE-only drivers, see End-of-life drivers.

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