A high level cassandra C#/.NET client ported from Java

Cassandra is a highly available column oriented database.

Hector is the greatest warrior in the greek mithology, Troy's builder and brother of Cassandra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra

This client provides:

 o high level, simple object oriented interface to cassandra
 o failover behavior on the client side
 o connection pooling for improved performance and scalability
 o load balancing

Installing Cassandra on Windows:
	
1. Download and install the latest Sun Java Runtime - http://www.java.com/getjava
2. Set your JAVA_HOME environment variable, example "c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_18"
	verify the path.
3. Download latest Cassandra distribution (currently 0.6.1) - http://cassandra.apache.org/
	(The package is a .tar.gz file, which can be unpacked using 7-zip from http://www.7-zip.org/) 
4. Unpack Cassandra distro, I prefer c:\casssandra###, where ### is the version without "."
	for example "c:\cassandra061".
5. Set your CASSANDRA_HOME environment variable to the path from step 4.
6. To manually test that Cassandra is installed, 
	A. open a command prompt:
		run -> cmd
		cd c:\cassandra061
		bin/cassandra.bat -f
	B. open a second command prompt:
		run -> cmd
		cd c:\cassandra061
		bin/cassandra-cli.bat
			cassandra> ?
				help on commands
			cassandra> connect localhost/9160
			Connected to: "Test Cluster" on localhost/9160
			cassandra> show api version
			2.1.0
			cassandra> show keyspaces
			Keyspace1
			System
	C.	Cassandra is properly installed.
	
The integration tests in the HectorSharp project starts up cassandra listening to thrift
on port 9060 automatically, and then executes the tests.  It maintains a separate configuration
and database files, in the build output directory.		

Current TO DOs:

 o Failover unit tests
 o Evaluate high-level API interface - optimize for usability
	o Make connection pooling transparent to user api
 o Provide configuration system
 o Convert client monitor to perf counters?
 o write some docs on how to get cassandra working on Windows

If you are interested in contributing, let us know.

The work was initially inspired by http://code.google.com/p/cassandra-java-client/ but has taken off to different 
directions since.

The original Java version of this port is available at http://github.com/rantav/hector