Just came across a easy and nice to read article explaining how to get started with noSQL database system. These no relational databases are getting increasingly popular to tackle the distribution and large data set problems.
Cassandra's ColumnFamily data model offers the convenience of column indexes with the performance of log-structured updates, strong support for materialized views, and powerful built-in caching.
The article is nicely written by
Kellabyte and shows step by step process how to get going with the programming in a .net platform.