How to use the Cassandra CData driver with Liquibase

Applies to: 

• Liquibase Secure (Pro)
• Liquibase Community (Open Source)

Summary:

Apache Cassandra is a community-maintained integration of Liquibase and is currently at the Contributed level for Database Verification & Support. CData has a closed-source Cassandra driver that can be used to create a JDBC connection to a Cassandra database that Liquibase can use. However, some configuration steps are required to use this driver with Liquibase.

Environment Conditions:

• Any recent version of Liquibase and corresponding liquibase-cassandra extension
• Currently tested with CData JDBC Driver For Cassandra 2023 23.0.8565.0 By CData Software, Inc.

How to configure Liquibase to work with the CData Cassandra driver

1. Download the liquibase-cassandra extension from the Liquibase release matching your version and place the liquibase-cassandra-.jar file into the Liquibase /lib folder.
2. Download the JDBC CData Cassandra driver.
   1. Note: You will need either a purchased CData license or a trial license to be able to utilize the driver
3. Move the cdata.jdbc.cassandra.jar file (path is CassandraJDBCDriver lib cdata.jdbc.cassandra.jar) to the Liquibase /lib folder.
4. Move your CData license to either the Liquibase /lib folder or the ~/.CData/lib folder.
   1. If you don't have a purchased license, you can use a trial license.

   2. To activate your trial license, run the below command in the same directory as the cdata.jdbc.cassandra.jar, which will generate a license file after answering a few questions. 

      java -jar cdata.jdbc.cassandra.jar --license

5. In the liquibase.properties file (you can also use the CLI or Liquibase environment variables), add the following properties:

   1. url: jdbc:cassandra://:/
      driver: cdata.jdbc.cassandra.CassandraDriver
      liquibase.command.defaultSchemaName: 

6. Note: When using the CData driver, Liquibase cannot create the DATABASECHANGELOG and DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table. These two tables must be created manually for each keyspace Liquibase connects to.
7. Create the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table.

   1. CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS ."DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK" (
          "ID" INT,
          "LOCKED" BOOLEAN,
          "LOCKGRANTED" timestamp,
          "LOCKEDBY" TEXT,
          PRIMARY KEY ("ID")
      );

8. Create the DATABASECHANGELOG table.

   1. CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS ."DATABASECHANGELOG" (
          "ID" TEXT,
          "AUTHOR" TEXT,
          "FILENAME" TEXT,
          "DATEEXECUTED" timestamp,
          "ORDEREXECUTED" INT,
          "EXECTYPE" TEXT,
          "MD5SUM" TEXT,
          "DESCRIPTION" TEXT,
          "COMMENTS" TEXT,
          "TAG" TEXT,
          "LIQUIBASE" TEXT,
          "CONTEXTS" TEXT,
          "LABELS" TEXT,
          "DEPLOYMENT_ID" TEXT,
          PRIMARY KEY ("ID", "AUTHOR", "FILENAME")
      );

9. Run liquibase status to verify connectivity.

Related Article(s):

CData JDBC Driver for Cassandra Documentation