December 2024 monthly summary for apache/cassandra. Key feature delivered: a new virtual table system_views.partition_key_statistics that exposes SSTable-level metadata (partition keys, token values, size estimates, and SSTable counts) to enable efficient querying without heavy disk I/O. The change also updates the virtual table activation/selection logic to support row filtering and partition key statistics queries, underpinned by commit 69dc5d05ef18ff7c6a4433a81b8a3d59e3069579. Impact: Improves operational visibility for admins and developers, speeds troubleshooting and capacity planning by enabling metadata queries with minimal disk access. This delivers measurable business value by reducing maintenance toil and accelerating data-distribution analysis in large clusters. Technologies/skills demonstrated: database internals (virtual tables), query planning and filtering, system_views extension, performance optimization, version control discipline. Overall accomplishments: A focused feature deliverable with clear operational and performance benefits, laid groundwork for further metadata-driven dashboards and analytics in Cassandra. Bugs fixed: No major bugs reported for this repository this month.