The NoSQL term originally referred to a new generation of databases that shunned SQL for other interfaces. The term NoSQL has recently become a catch-all term for post-relational "not-only SQL" databases that use a method of storage different from a relational, or SQL, database.

HCD is a distributed and highly available database that uses peer-to-peer communication. Data modeling in HCD is similar to relational databases while differing in key areas to provide blazing fast interaction. Relational databases use joins between tables for relationships. HCD uses denormalization to achieve more robust querying.

The HCD Capacity Planning Guide provides recommendations for choosing hardware including number of CPUs, amount of RAM and type of disks appropriate for the workload and environment.

Mission Control is the next generation operations platform for deploying, managing, and maintaining HCD, DataStax Enterprise (DSE), and Apache Cassandra® clusters. It provides a web-based interface that simplifies management and operation of HCD clusters.

The Docker image can be deployed as a standalone container for development environments.

The recommended installation method is to deploy HCD using Mission Control. See Installing HCD.

HCD architecture allows any authorized user to connect to any node in any datacenter and access data using the Cassandra Query Language (CQL 3.4.5 protocol v5). For ease of use, CQL uses a similar syntax to SQL. The most basic way to interact with HCD is using the CQL shell, cqlsh. Using cqlsh, you can create keyspaces and tables, insert records and query tables, and much more. Other ways to interact with HCD are:

HCD provides several solutions for migrating data from other databases: DataStax Bulk Loader (DSBulk) is an open-source utility for loading or unloading data in CSV or JSON format into and out of HCD databases.