Just wanted to mention a very well written post that explains Column Family Databases, like that of Cassandra, in the most straight forward way that I have found to explain the concept to .NET developers. I have no doubt that most of you who read Ayende’s blog have already seen this, but for those that might have missed the post, or don’t follow him, here it is:
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/05/14/that-no-sql-thing-column-family-databases.aspx
The fictitious fluent interface that he demonstrates in this blog post was a great inspiration to my own Fluent Querying that I have included in Fluent Cassandra.