Stargate in Astra: Developer-ready Database-as-a-Service

Today, DataStax announced the integration of the Stargate data gateway and its REST, GraphQL, and Schemaless JSON API extensions in a major upgrade to Astra, our multi-cloud Database-as-a-Service built on Apache Cassandra®. 

With this release, Cassandra is developer-ready.

DataStax powers modern data apps for 500 of the world’s most demanding enterprises, including: The Home Depot, T-Mobile, Intuit, and half of the Fortune 100, delivering on-prem and cloud-hosted products based on Cassandra - the proven, open-source NoSQL database.

Data APIs for App Developers

As we’ve worked with enterprises and our co-contributors to the Cassandra project, over the past ten years, we’ve noticed the emergence of data APIs built on top of Cassandra.

Platform engineering teams at multiple successful app companies - like Netflix and Yelp - have built their own data gateways, so that their internal app developers can build using simple APIs without needing to learn the underlying database and the complexity of schema management.

Like the app developers at Yelp and Netflix, all application developers need data APIs, which integrate into their existing toolsets and work the way they do - with native data shapes like JSON, REST, and GraphQL, accessible in the language of their choice. What app devs don’t need is the huge speed bump of learning a Cassandra specific query (CQL) language and the finer points of advanced data modeling and query design. 

That’s where Stargate comes in.

Stargate - the open source data gateway 

In September of 2020, DataStax introduced Stargate, an open source data gateway that sits between the app and the databases it uses. Stargate brings together an API platform and data request coordination code into one open-source project. Stargate abstracts Cassandra-specific concepts entirely from app developers and supports different API options, removing barriers of entry for new software developers.

Separating coordination (Stargate) nodes from storage (Cassandra) nodes enables optimization of each node type, and independent scaling, or replacement, on either side of the gateway. 

Since the founding of the Stargate project, new API extensions (GraphQL API and JSON schemaless Document API) have been added, joining the initial REST and CQL extensions.  These can all be used to access Cassandra databases of 3.11, 4.0 beta, and DataStax Enterprise 6.8.

"We are excited to use Stargate as a gateway for polyglot data stores to facilitate agility and speed to market...” — Suresh Khatri, Head of Engineering, Nexus, Standard Chartered Bank

"At Yelp, we are excited about Stargate's vision to be an open-source and cloud-native data access API gateway..." — Sirisha Vanteru, Engineering Manager, Yelp

“Getting Stargate up and running locally with GraphQL and connected to my React app was very painless and took me less than 30 mins to get developing..." — Brandon Landfried, Technical Lead at Ippon Technologies USA

Stargate in Astra:  Developer-ready Database a-as-a-Service

Now, DataStax has integrated Stargate into Astra - delivering the Open, Multi-cloud stack for modern data apps as-a-service.  All of the Stargate APIs are supported, with easy connections, rich, free-to-use sample apps, and even a Javascript SDK.

With this release, your developers will benefit from: 

• Choice of APIs — Developers can use their choice of the REST API, GraphQL API or schemaless Document API to access data. For the first time, developers can use the fastest-to-deploy app stacks with a Cassandra-based data service. 
• No modeling — By using the Document API, developers can store JSON objects in Astra, without doing up front modeling. Developers can easily prototype without having to pre-define schema and queries.
• Multi-cloud — Developers have the freedom of choice to run on any cloud. They can start storing data immediately on the cloud of their choice and scale apps across AWS, GCP, and Azure. 
• Global-scale  — Take apps from zero to infinity scale in minutes. Developers can now future-proof their apps on the proven, open-source NoSQL database at global-scale.

"Using Stargate's REST API platform would ...allow us to build modern apps with ease. We are excited to see how we can modernize our architecture with Stargate in Astra..." — Jon Lau, Cassandra DB Platform Owner, Engineer, Macquarie Group

"It's great to see that Apache Cassandra is now primed for all developers. We're very excited about the new JSON capability in Astra and Stargate..." — Glen Kim, Team Lead and Infrastructure Engineer, USAA

Astra Serverless Beta - True Cloud Economics

Also, launching today is Astra Serverless data storage in beta, delivering fully elastic data services, with pay-as-you-go pricing. This means you get the performance and elasticity you need to run your application workloads based on your business needs without worrying about scaling, capacity planning, or maintenance.

The New API Stack for Modern Data Apps

With the integration of Stargate in Astra, DataStax is delivering the open multi-cloud stack for modern data apps. DataStax gives developers and enterprises the freedom of choice, simplicity, and true cloud economics to deploy massive data, delivered via APIs, powering rich interactions on multi-cloud, open source and Kubernetes. 

Built on proven Apache Cassandra and the Stargate open source API platform, DataStax Astra is the new stack for modern data apps, delivered as-a-service.