Date-Tiered Compaction in Apache Cassandra

This post introduces and details the Date-Tiered Compaction Strategy (DTCS) for Apache Cassandra, a custom compaction strategy developed for time-series data. It explains the fundamental concepts of Cassandra's storage (SSTables, compaction) and contrasts DTCS with existing strategies (STCS, LCS). The core contribution is the design and benchmarking of DTCS, demonstrating its improved read performance for time-series data through better SSTable organization and its effectiveness in data purging. It also outlines the conditions under which DTCS is beneficial and when to avoid it, emphasizing the impact of out-of-order writes and timestamp consistency.