Digg Dumps MySQL for Cassandra

Big changes are afoot at social networking and link-voting site Digg. After building its formidable following on the MySQL database, it’s changing gears and embracing an open source non-relational database that was first created by fellow social networking site Facebook.

Digg has been busy testing Cassandra in various aspects of its operations since September 2009. Most of Digg’s functionality has been re-implemented from MySQL to now use Cassandra as its primary data store.

The company opted for Cassandra over other NoSQL databases including CouchDB and MongoDB. Instead of using tables and rows and linking relationships between the two to deliver data, NoSQL databases use different types of data stores and objects.

Datamation takes a closer look at how the migration is going and what role MySQL will play in Digg’s immediate future.

Social networking and voting site Digg is rewriting its underlying software infrastructure in an effort to improve performance and scalability. Part of that effort involves moving away from the MySQL database that has helped to power Digg since its creation.

In MySQL’s place, Digg is going with an open source NoSQL non-relational database called Cassandra that was originally created by Facebook. As part of the migration effort from MySQL to Cassandra, Digg developers built a tool to help move data from one database to the other. The tool could soon be open source, helping other developers make the same move.

“We built a tool that we call ‘transcribe’ that takes advantage of Hadoop to bulk import from MySQL to Cassandra,” John Quinn, vice president of engineering at Digg, told InternetNews.com. “We’ll be releasing that to the open source community very soon.”

Read the full story at Datamation:


Digg Moves from MySQL to NoSQL