Rich and flexible data model

Cassandra provides an SQL-like syntax to interact with the database. Cassandra Query Language (CQL) presents a familiar row column representation of data. CQL provides a familiar SQL-like table definition with columns and defined data types. Schema is flexible, and new columns can be added while using the existing data. The data model doesn't support features problematic in distributed systems such as joins. On top of this, Cassandra provides other features such as collections to store multiple items in a single column. It also lets you easily define secondary indexes and materialized views for fast lookups on non-primary key columns.

The previous thrift-based interface was closely tied to the internal storage view. This was fairly complex and had a relatively high learning curve to adopt. The CQL interface is much easier to understand because of its similarity to SQL.