This special episode of Open||Source||Data features an interview with Patrick McFadin. Patrick has been a distributed systems hacker since he first plugged a modem into his Atari computer. Looking for adventure, he joined the US Navy, working on the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), which cemented his love of distributed systems. He is now an Apache Cassandra Committer, and is the Vice President of Developer Relations at DataStax. 

Sam catches up with Patrick at Data Day Texas to discuss his book Managing Cloud Native Data on Kubernetes, Cassandra Forward, and the future of Apache Cassandra.

-------------------

“I can now use my Parquet file in Iceberg or DuckDB, and this is data that I created with Cassandra. And we're not getting to the point where we have to reinvent an entire database. We can just connect the Lego parts together and if they're open, then I don't have these encumbrances. I'm not like, ‘Well, I can connect that if I call a salesperson and get a license.’ [...] That's what's exciting to me about Cassandra, the way that the ecosystem is evolving around Cassandra. It's not, ‘Cassandra's at the center, it's just a player.’ It's at the party." – Patrick McFadin

-------------------

Episode Timestamps:

(01:06): What open source data means to Patrick

(02:11): Patrick discusses his book Managing Cloud Native Data on Kubernetes

(10:02): Patrick discusses Cassandra Forward

(11:09): The future of Apache Cassandra

-------------------

Links:

LinkedIn - Connect with Patrick

Cassandra Forward