Cassandra Query Language (CQL) v3.4.3
- Cassandra Query Language (CQL) v3.4.3
- CQL Syntax
- Preamble
- Conventions
- Identifiers and keywords
- Constants
- Comments
- Statements
- Prepared Statement
- Data Definition
- CREATE KEYSPACE
- USE
- ALTER KEYSPACE
- DROP KEYSPACE
- CREATE TABLE
- ALTER TABLE
- DROP TABLE
- TRUNCATE
- CREATE INDEX
- DROP INDEX
- CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW
- ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW
- DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW
- CREATE TYPE
- ALTER TYPE
- DROP TYPE
- CREATE TRIGGER
- DROP TRIGGER
- CREATE FUNCTION
- DROP FUNCTION
- CREATE AGGREGATE
- DROP AGGREGATE
- Data Manipulation
- INSERT
- UPDATE
- DELETE
- BATCH
- Queries
- SELECT
- Database Roles
- CREATE ROLE
- ALTER ROLE
- DROP ROLE
- GRANT ROLE
- REVOKE ROLE
- CREATE USER
- ALTER USER
- DROP USER
- LIST USERS
- Data Control
- Permissions
- GRANT PERMISSION
- REVOKE PERMISSION
- Data Types
- Working with timestamps
- Working with dates
- Working with time
- Counters
- Working with collections
- Functions
- Cast
- Token
- Uuid
- Timeuuid functions
- Time conversion functions
- Blob conversion functions
- Aggregates
- Count
- Max and Min
- Sum
- Avg
- User-Defined Functions
- User-Defined Aggregates
- JSON Support
- SELECT JSON
- INSERT JSON
- JSON Encoding of Cassandra Data Types
- The fromJson() Function
- The toJson() Function
- Appendix A: CQL Keywords
- Appendix B: CQL Reserved Types
- Changes
- 3.4.3
- 3.4.2
- 3.4.1
- 3.4.0
- 3.3.1
- 3.3.0
- 3.2.0
- 3.1.7
- 3.1.6
- 3.1.5
- 3.1.4
- 3.1.3
- 3.1.2
- 3.1.1
- 3.1.0
- 3.0.5
- 3.0.4
- 3.0.3
- 3.0.2
- 3.0.1
- Versioning
CQL Syntax
Preamble
This document describes the Cassandra Query Language (CQL) version 3. CQL v3 is not backward compatible with CQL v2 and differs from it in numerous ways. Note that this document describes the last version of the languages. However, thechanges
CQL v3 offers a model very close to SQL in the sense that data is put in tables containingrows of columns. For that reason, when used in this document, these terms (tables, rows and columns) have the same definition than they have in SQL. But please note that as such, they donot refer to the concept of rows and columns found in the internal implementation of Cassandra and in the thrift and CQL v2 API.
Conventions
To aid in specifying the CQL syntax, we will use the following conventions in this document:
- Language rules will be given in a BNF -like notation:
- Nonterminal symbols will have
<angle brackets>
. - As additional shortcut notations to BNF, we’ll use traditional regular expression’s symbols (
?
,+
and *
) to signify that a given symbol is optional and/or can be repeated. We’ll also allow parentheses to group symbols and the[<characters>]
notation to represent any one of <characters>
. - The grammar is provided for documentation purposes and leave some minor details out. For instance, the last column definition in a
CREATE TABLE
statement is optional but supported if present even though the provided grammar in this document suggest it is not supported. - Sample code will be provided in a code block:
- References to keywords or pieces of CQL code in running text will be shown in a
fixed-width font
.
Identifiers and keywords
The CQL language uses identifiers (or names) to identify tables, columns and other objects. An identifier is a token matching the regular expression[a-zA-Z]
[a-zA-Z0-9_]
*
.
A number of such identifiers, like SELECT
or WITH
, arekeywords. They have a fixed meaning for the language and most are reserved. The list of those keywords can be found inAppendix A.
Identifiers and (unquoted) keywords are case insensitive. Thus SELECT
is the same thanselect
or sElEcT
, and myId
is the same thanmyid
or MYID
for instance. A convention often used (in particular by the samples of this documentation) is to use upper case for keywords and lower case for other identifiers.
There is a second kind of identifiers called quoted identifiers defined by enclosing an arbitrary sequence of characters in double-quotes("
). Quoted identifiers are never keywords. Thus"select"
is not a reserved keyword and can be used to refer to a column, whileselect
would raise a parse error. Also, contrarily to unquoted identifiers and keywords, quoted identifiers are case sensitive ("My Quoted Id"
isdifferent from "my quoted id"
). A fully lowercase quoted identifier that matches[a-zA-Z]
[a-zA-Z0-9_]
*
is equivalent to the unquoted identifier obtained by removing the double-quote (so"myid"
is equivalent to myid
and to myId
but different from"myId"
). Inside a quoted identifier, the double-quote character can be repeated to escape it, so"foo "" bar"
is a valid identifier.
Warning: quoted identifiers allows to declare columns with arbitrary names, and those can sometime clash with specific names used by the server. For instance, when using conditional update, the server will respond with a result-set containing a special result named "[applied]"
. If you’ve declared a column with such a name, this could potentially confuse some tools and should be avoided. In general, unquoted identifiers should be preferred but if you use quoted identifiers, it is strongly advised to avoid any name enclosed by squared brackets (like "[applied]"
) and any name that looks like a function call (like "f(x)"
).
Constants
CQL defines the following kind of constants: strings, integers, floats, booleans, uuids and blobs:
- A string constant is an arbitrary sequence of characters characters enclosed by single-quote(
'
). One can include a single-quote in a string by repeating it, e.g.'It''s raining today'
. Those are not to be confused with quoted identifiers that use double-quotes. - An integer constant is defined by
'-'?[0-9]+
. - A float constant is defined by
'-'?[0-9]+('.'[0-9]*)?([eE][+-]?[0-9+])?
. On top of that,NaN
and Infinity
are also float constants. - A boolean constant is either
true
or false
up to case-insensitivity (i.e.True
is a valid boolean constant). - A UUID constant is defined by
hex{8}-hex{4}-hex{4}-hex{4}-hex{12}
wherehex
is an hexadecimal character, e.g. [0-9a-fA-F]
and {4}
is the number of such characters. - A blob constant is an hexadecimal number defined by
0[xX](hex)+
wherehex
is an hexadecimal character, e.g. [0-9a-fA-F]
.
For how these constants are typed, see the data types section.
Comments
A comment in CQL is a line beginning by either double dashes (--
) or double slash (//
).
Multi-line comments are also supported through enclosure within /*
and*/
(but nesting is not supported).
Statements
CQL consists of statements. As in SQL, these statements can be divided in 3 categories:
- Data definition statements, that allow to set and change the way data is stored.
- Data manipulation statements, that allow to change data
- Queries, to look up data
All statements end with a semicolon (;
) but that semicolon can be omitted when dealing with a single statement. The supported statements are described in the following sections. When describing the grammar of said statements, we will reuse the non-terminal symbols defined below:
Please note that not every possible productions of the grammar above will be valid in practice. Most notably,<variable>
and nested <collection-literal>
are currently not allowed inside<collection-literal>
.
A <variable>
can be either anonymous (a question mark (?
)) or named (an identifier preceded by:
). Both declare a bind variables for prepared statements. The only difference between an anymous and a named variable is that a named one will be easier to refer to (how exactly depends on the client driver used).
The <properties>
production is use by statement that create and alter keyspaces and tables. Each<property>
is either a simple one, in which case it just has a value, or amap one, in which case it’s value is a map grouping sub-options. The following will refer to one or the other as thekind (simple or map) of the property.
A <tablename>
will be used to identify a table. This is an identifier representing the table name that can be preceded by a keyspace name. The keyspace name, if provided, allow to identify a table in another keyspace than the currently active one (the currently active keyspace is set through the USE
For supported <function>
, see the section on functions.
Strings can be either enclosed with single quotes or two dollar characters. The second syntax has been introduced to allow strings that contain single quotes. Typical candidates for such strings are source code fragments for user-defined functions.
Sample:
Prepared Statement
CQL supports prepared statements. Prepared statement is an optimization that allows to parse a query only once but execute it multiple times with different concrete values.
In a statement, each time a column value is expected (in the data manipulation and query statements), a<variable>
(see above) can be used instead. A statement with bind variables must then beprepared. Once it has been prepared, it can executed by providing concrete values for the bind variables. The exact procedure to prepare a statement and execute a prepared statement depends on the CQL driver used and is beyond the scope of this document.
In addition to providing column values, bind markers may be used to provide values forLIMIT
, TIMESTAMP
, and TTL
clauses. If anonymous bind markers are used, the names for the query parameters will be[limit]
, [timestamp]
, and [ttl]
, respectively.
Data Definition
CREATE KEYSPACE
Syntax:
Sample:
The CREATE KEYSPACE
statement creates a new top-level keyspace. A keyspace is a namespace that defines a replication strategy and some options for a set of tables. Valid keyspaces names are identifiers composed exclusively of alphanumerical characters and whose length is lesser or equal to 32. Note that as identifiers, keyspace names are case insensitive: use a quoted identifier for case sensitive keyspace names.
The supported <properties>
for CREATE KEYSPACE
are:
name | kind | mandatory | default | description |
| map | yes | | The replication strategy and options to use for the keyspace. |
| simple | no | true | Whether to use the commit log for updates on this keyspace (disable this option at your own risk!). |
The replication
<property>
is mandatory. It must at least contains the'class'
sub-option which defines the replication strategy class to use. The rest of the sub-options depends on that replication strategy class. By default, Cassandra support the following'class'
:
-
'SimpleStrategy'
: A simple strategy that defines a simple replication factor for the whole cluster. The only sub-options supported is'replication_factor'
to define that replication factor and is mandatory. -
'NetworkTopologyStrategy'
: A replication strategy that allows to set the replication factor independently for each data-center. The rest of the sub-options are key-value pairs where each time the key is the name of a datacenter and the value the replication factor for that data-center. -
'OldNetworkTopologyStrategy'
: A legacy replication strategy. You should avoid this strategy for new keyspaces and prefer'NetworkTopologyStrategy'
.
Attempting to create an already existing keyspace will return an error unless theIF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If it is used, the statement will be a no-op if the keyspace already exists.
USE
Syntax:
Sample:
The USE
statement takes an existing keyspace name as argument and set it as the per-connection current working keyspace. All subsequent keyspace-specific actions will be performed in the context of the selected keyspace, unlessotherwise specified, until another USE statement is issued or the connection terminates.
ALTER KEYSPACE
Syntax:
Sample:
The ALTER KEYSPACE
statement alters the properties of an existing keyspace. The supported<properties>
are the same as for the CREATE KEYSPACE
DROP KEYSPACE
Syntax:
Sample:
A DROP KEYSPACE
statement results in the immediate, irreversible removal of an existing keyspace, including all column families in it, and all data contained in those column families.
If the keyspace does not exists, the statement will return an error, unless IF EXISTS
is used in which case the operation is a no-op.
CREATE TABLE
Syntax:
Sample:
The CREATE TABLE
statement creates a new table. Each such table is a set ofrows (usually representing related entities) for which it defines a number of properties. A table is defined by aname, it defines the columns composing rows of the table and have a number of options. Note that the CREATE COLUMNFAMILY
syntax is supported as an alias forCREATE TABLE
(for historical reasons).
Attempting to create an already existing table will return an error unless theIF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If it is used, the statement will be a no-op if the table already exists.
<tablename>
Valid table names are the same as valid keyspace names (up to 32 characters long alphanumerical identifiers). If the table name is provided alone, the table is created within the current keyspace (seeUSE), but if it is prefixed by an existing keyspace name (see <tablename>
grammar), it is created in the specified keyspace (but doesnot change the current keyspace).
<column-definition>
A CREATE TABLE
statement defines the columns that rows of the table can have. Acolumn is defined by its name (an identifier) and its type (see the data types
Within a table, a row is uniquely identified by its PRIMARY KEY
(or more simply the key), and hence all table definitionsmust define a PRIMARY KEY (and only one). A PRIMARY KEY
is composed of one or more of the columns defined in the table. If thePRIMARY KEY
is only one column, this can be specified directly after the column definition. Otherwise, it must be specified by followingPRIMARY KEY
by the comma-separated list of column names composing the key within parenthesis. Note that:
is equivalent to
Partition key and clustering columns
In CQL, the order in which columns are defined for the PRIMARY KEY
matters. The first column of the key is called thepartition key. It has the property that all the rows sharing the same partition key (even across table in fact) are stored on the same physical node. Also, insertion/update/deletion on rows sharing the same partition key for a given table are performedatomically and in isolation. Note that it is possible to have a composite partition key, i.e. a partition key formed of multiple columns, using an extra set of parentheses to define which columns forms the partition key.
The remaining columns of the PRIMARY KEY
definition, if any, are called __clustering columns. On a given physical node, rows for a given partition key are stored in the order induced by the clustering columns, making the retrieval of rows in that clustering order particularly efficient (see SELECT).
STATIC
columns
Some columns can be declared as STATIC
in a table definition. A column that is static will be “shared” by all the rows belonging to the same partition (having the same partition key). For instance, in:
the last query will return 'static1'
as value for s
, sinces
is static and thus the 2nd insertion modified this “shared” value. Note however that static columns are only static within a given partition, and if in the example above both rows where from different partitions (i.e. if they had different value for pk
), then the 2nd insertion would not have modified the value ofs
for the first row.
A few restrictions applies to when static columns are allowed:
- tables with the
COMPACT STORAGE
option (see below) cannot have them - a table without clustering columns cannot have static columns (in a table without clustering columns, every partition has only one row, and so every column is inherently static).
- only non
PRIMARY KEY
columns can be static
<option>
The CREATE TABLE
statement supports a number of options that controls the configuration of a new table. These options can be specified after theWITH
keyword.
The first of these option is COMPACT STORAGE
. This option is mainly targeted towards backward compatibility for definitions created before CQL3 (seewww.datastax.com/dev/blog/thrift-to-cql3 for more details). The option also provides a slightly more compact layout of data on disk but at the price of diminished flexibility and extensibility for the table. Most notably, COMPACT STORAGE
tables cannot have collections nor static columns and aCOMPACT STORAGE
table with at least one clustering column supports exactly one (as in not 0 nor more than 1) column not part of thePRIMARY KEY
definition (which imply in particular that you cannot add nor remove columns after creation). For those reasons,COMPACT STORAGE
is not recommended outside of the backward compatibility reason evoked above.
Another option is CLUSTERING ORDER
. It allows to define the ordering of rows on disk. It takes the list of the clustering column names with, for each of them, the on-disk order (Ascending or descending). Note that this option affectswhat ORDER BY
are allowed during SELECT
.
Table creation supports the following other <property>
:
option | kind | default | description |
| simple | none | A free-form, human-readable comment. |
| simple | 0.1 | The probability with which to query extra nodes (e.g. more nodes than required by the consistency level) for the purpose of read repairs. |
| simple | 0 | The probability with which to query extra nodes (e.g. more nodes than required by the consistency level) belonging to the same data center than the read coordinator for the purpose of read repairs. |
| simple | 864000 | Time to wait before garbage collecting tombstones (deletion markers). |
| simple | 0.00075 | The target probability of false positive of the sstable bloom filters. Said bloom filters will be sized to provide the provided probability (thus lowering this value impact the size of bloom filters in-memory and on-disk) |
| simple | 0 | The default expiration time (“TTL”) in seconds for a table. |
| map | see below | Compaction options, see below. |
| map | see below | Compression options, see below. |
| map | see below | Caching options, see below. |
Compaction options
The compaction
property must at least define the 'class'
sub-option, that defines the compaction strategy class to use. The default supported class are'SizeTieredCompactionStrategy'
, 'LeveledCompactionStrategy'
,'DateTieredCompactionStrategy'
and 'TimeWindowCompactionStrategy'
. Custom strategy can be provided by specifying the full class name as astring constant. The rest of the sub-options depends on the chosen class. The sub-options supported by the default classes are:
option | supported compaction strategy | default | description |
| all | true | A boolean denoting whether compaction should be enabled or not. |
| all | 0.2 | A ratio such that if a sstable has more than this ratio of gcable tombstones over all contained columns, the sstable will be compacted (with no other sstables) for the purpose of purging those tombstones. |
| all | 1 day | The minimum time to wait after an sstable creation time before considering it for “tombstone compaction”, where “tombstone compaction” is the compaction triggered if the sstable has more gcable tombstones than |
| all | false | Setting this to true enables more aggressive tombstone compactions – single sstable tombstone compactions will run without checking how likely it is that they will be successful. |
| SizeTieredCompactionStrategy | 50MB | The size tiered strategy groups SSTables to compact in buckets. A bucket groups SSTables that differs from less than 50% in size. However, for small sizes, this would result in a bucketing that is too fine grained. |
| SizeTieredCompactionStrategy | 4 | Minimum number of SSTables needed to start a minor compaction. |
| SizeTieredCompactionStrategy | 32 | Maximum number of SSTables processed by one minor compaction. |
| SizeTieredCompactionStrategy | 0.5 | Size tiered consider sstables to be within the same bucket if their size is within [average_size * |
| SizeTieredCompactionStrategy | 1.5 | Size tiered consider sstables to be within the same bucket if their size is within [average_size * |
| LeveledCompactionStrategy | 5MB | The target size (in MB) for sstables in the leveled strategy. Note that while sstable sizes should stay less or equal to |
| DateTieredCompactionStrategy | MICROSECONDS | The timestamp resolution used when inserting data, could be MILLISECONDS, MICROSECONDS etc (should be understandable by Java TimeUnit) - don’t change this unless you do mutations with USING TIMESTAMP (or equivalent directly in the client) |
| DateTieredCompactionStrategy | 60 | The base size of the time windows. |
| DateTieredCompactionStrategy | 365 | SSTables only containing data that is older than this will never be compacted. |
| TimeWindowCompactionStrategy | MICROSECONDS | The timestamp resolution used when inserting data, could be MILLISECONDS, MICROSECONDS etc (should be understandable by Java TimeUnit) - don’t change this unless you do mutations with USING TIMESTAMP (or equivalent directly in the client) |
| TimeWindowCompactionStrategy | DAYS | The Java TimeUnit used for the window size, set in conjunction with |
| TimeWindowCompactionStrategy | 1 | The number of |
Compression options
For the compression
property, the following sub-options are available:
option | default | description |
| LZ4Compressor | The compression algorithm to use. Default compressor are: LZ4Compressor, SnappyCompressor and DeflateCompressor. Use |
| true | By default compression is enabled. To disable it, set |
| 64KB | On disk SSTables are compressed by block (to allow random reads). This defines the size (in KB) of said block. Bigger values may improve the compression rate, but increases the minimum size of data to be read from disk for a read |
| 1.0 | When compression is enabled, each compressed block includes a checksum of that block for the purpose of detecting disk bitrot and avoiding the propagation of corruption to other replica. This option defines the probability with which those checksums are checked during read. By default they are always checked. Set to 0 to disable checksum checking and to 0.5 for instance to check them every other read |
Caching options
For the caching
property, the following sub-options are available:
option | default | description |
| ALL | Whether to cache keys (“key cache”) for this table. Valid values are: |
| NONE | The amount of rows to cache per partition (“row cache”). If an integer |
Other considerations:
- When inserting / updating a given row, not all columns needs to be defined (except for those part of the key), and missing columns occupy no space on disk. Furthermore, adding new columns (see <a href=#alterStmt>ALTER TABLE) is a constant time operation. There is thus no need to try to anticipate future usage (or to cry when you haven’t) when creating a table.
ALTER TABLE
Syntax:
Sample:
The ALTER
statement is used to manipulate table definitions. It allows for adding new columns, dropping existing ones, or updating the table options. As with table creation,ALTER COLUMNFAMILY
is allowed as an alias for ALTER TABLE
.
The <tablename>
is the table name optionally preceded by the keyspace name. The<instruction>
defines the alteration to perform:
-
ADD
: Adds a new column to the table. The <identifier>
for the new column must not conflict with an existing column. Moreover, columns cannot be added to tables defined with theCOMPACT STORAGE
option. -
DROP
: Removes a column from the table. Dropped columns will immediately become unavailable in the queries and will not be included in compacted sstables in the future. If a column is readded, queries won’t return values written before the column was last dropped. It is assumed that timestamps represent actual time, so if this is not your case, you should NOT readd previously dropped columns. Columns can’t be dropped from tables defined with theCOMPACT STORAGE
option. -
WITH
: Allows to update the options of the table. The supported <option>
(and syntax) are the same as for the CREATE TABLE
statement except thatCOMPACT STORAGE
is not supported. Note that setting any compaction
sub-options has the effect of erasing all previouscompaction
options, so you need to re-specify all the sub-options if you want to keep them. The same note applies to the set ofcompression
sub-options.
CQL type compatibility:
CQL data types may be converted only as the following table.
Data type may be altered to: | Data type |
timestamp | bigint |
ascii, bigint, boolean, date, decimal, double, float, inet, int, smallint, text, time, timestamp, timeuuid, tinyint, uuid, varchar, varint | blob |
int | date |
ascii, varchar | text |
bigint | time |
bigint | timestamp |
timeuuid | uuid |
ascii, text | varchar |
bigint, int, timestamp | varint |
Clustering columns have stricter requirements, only the below conversions are allowed.
Data type may be altered to: | Data type |
ascii, text, varchar | blob |
ascii, varchar | text |
ascii, text | varchar |
DROP TABLE
Syntax:
Sample:
The DROP TABLE
statement results in the immediate, irreversible removal of a table, including all data contained in it. As for table creation,DROP COLUMNFAMILY
is allowed as an alias for DROP TABLE
.
If the table does not exist, the statement will return an error, unless IF EXISTS
is used in which case the operation is a no-op.
TRUNCATE
Syntax:
Sample:
The TRUNCATE
statement permanently removes all data from a table.
CREATE INDEX
Syntax:
Sample:
The CREATE INDEX
statement is used to create a new (automatic) secondary index for a given (existing) column in a given table. A name for the index itself can be specified before theON
keyword, if desired. If data already exists for the column, it will be indexed asynchronously. After the index is created, new data for the column is indexed automatically at insertion time.
Attempting to create an already existing index will return an error unless theIF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If it is used, the statement will be a no-op if the index already exists.
Indexes on Map Keys
When creating an index on a map column, you may index either the keys or the values. If the column identifier is placed within thekeys()
function, the index will be on the map keys, allowing you to useCONTAINS KEY
in WHERE
clauses. Otherwise, the index will be on the map values.
DROP INDEX
Syntax:
Sample:
The DROP INDEX
statement is used to drop an existing secondary index. The argument of the statement is the index name, which may optionally specify the keyspace of the index.
If the index does not exists, the statement will return an error, unless IF EXISTS
is used in which case the operation is a no-op.
CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW
Syntax:
Sample:
The CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW
statement creates a new materialized view. Each such view is a set ofrows which corresponds to rows which are present in the underlying, or base, table specified in theSELECT
statement. A materialized view cannot be directly updated, but updates to the base table will cause corresponding updates in the view.
Attempting to create an already existing materialized view will return an error unless theIF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If it is used, the statement will be a no-op if the materialized view already exists.
WHERE
Clause
The <where-clause>
is similar to the where clause of a SELECT
statement, with a few differences. First, the where clause must contain an expression that disallowsNULL
values in columns in the view’s primary key. If no other restriction is desired, this can be accomplished with anIS NOT NULL
expression. Second, only columns which are in the base table’s primary key may be restricted with expressions other thanIS NOT NULL
. (Note that this second restriction may be lifted in the future.)
ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW
Syntax:
p.
The ALTER MATERIALIZED VIEW
statement allows options to be update; these options are the same asCREATE TABLE
's options.
DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW
Syntax:
Sample:
The DROP MATERIALIZED VIEW
statement is used to drop an existing materialized view.
If the materialized view does not exists, the statement will return an error, unlessIF EXISTS
is used in which case the operation is a no-op.
CREATE TYPE
Syntax:
Sample:
The CREATE TYPE
statement creates a new user-defined type. Each type is a set of named, typed fields. Field types may be any valid type, including collections and other existing user-defined types.
Attempting to create an already existing type will result in an error unless theIF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If it is used, the statement will be a no-op if the type already exists.
<typename>
Valid type names are identifiers. The names of existing CQL types and reserved type names
If the type name is provided alone, the type is created with the current keyspace (seeUSE). If it is prefixed by an existing keyspace name, the type is created within the specified keyspace instead of the current keyspace.
ALTER TYPE
Syntax:
Sample:
The ALTER TYPE
statement is used to manipulate type definitions. It allows for adding new fields, renaming existing fields, or changing the type of existing fields.
DROP TYPE
Syntax:
The DROP TYPE
statement results in the immediate, irreversible removal of a type. Attempting to drop a type that is still in use by another type or a table will result in an error.
If the type does not exist, an error will be returned unless IF EXISTS
is used, in which case the operation is a no-op.
CREATE TRIGGER
Syntax:
Sample:
The actual logic that makes up the trigger can be written in any Java (JVM) language and exists outside the database. You place the trigger code in alib/triggers
subdirectory of the Cassandra installation directory, it loads during cluster startup, and exists on every node that participates in a cluster. The trigger defined on a table fires before a requested DML statement occurs, which ensures the atomicity of the transaction.
DROP TRIGGER
Syntax:
Sample:
DROP TRIGGER
statement removes the registration of a trigger created usingCREATE TRIGGER
.
CREATE FUNCTION
Syntax:
Sample:
CREATE FUNCTION
creates or replaces a user-defined function.
Function Signature
Signatures are used to distinguish individual functions. The signature consists of:
- The fully qualified function name – i.e keyspace plus function-name
- The concatenated list of all argument types
Note that keyspace names, function names and argument types are subject to the default naming conventions and case-sensitivity rules.
CREATE FUNCTION
with the optional OR REPLACE
keywords either creates a function or replaces an existing one with the same signature. ACREATE FUNCTION
without OR REPLACE
fails if a function with the same signature already exists.
Behavior on invocation with null
values must be defined for each function. There are two options:
-
RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
declares that the function will always returnnull
if any of the input arguments is null
. -
CALLED ON NULL INPUT
declares that the function will always be executed.
If the optional IF NOT EXISTS
keywords are used, the function will only be created if another function with the same signature does not exist.
OR REPLACE
and IF NOT EXIST
cannot be used together.
Functions belong to a keyspace. If no keyspace is specified in <function-name>
, the current keyspace is used (i.e. the keyspace specified using theUSE
See the section on user-defined functions
DROP FUNCTION
Syntax:
Sample:
DROP FUNCTION
statement removes a function created using CREATE FUNCTION
.
You must specify the argument types (signature
DROP FUNCTION
with the optional IF EXISTS
keywords drops a function if it exists.
CREATE AGGREGATE
Syntax:
Sample:
See the section on user-defined aggregates
CREATE AGGREGATE
creates or replaces a user-defined aggregate.
CREATE AGGREGATE
with the optional OR REPLACE
keywords either creates an aggregate or replaces an existing one with the same signature. ACREATE AGGREGATE
without OR REPLACE
fails if an aggregate with the same signature already exists.
CREATE AGGREGATE
with the optional IF NOT EXISTS
keywords either creates an aggregate if it does not already exist.
OR REPLACE
and IF NOT EXIST
cannot be used together.
Aggregates belong to a keyspace. If no keyspace is specified in <aggregate-name>
, the current keyspace is used (i.e. the keyspace specified using theUSE
Signatures for user-defined aggregates follow the same rules
STYPE
defines the type of the state value and must be specified.
The optional INITCOND
defines the initial state value for the aggregate. It defaults tonull
. A non-@null@ INITCOND
must be specified for state functions that are declared withRETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
.
SFUNC
references an existing function to be used as the state modifying function. The type of first argument of the state function must matchSTYPE
. The remaining argument types of the state function must match the argument types of the aggregate function. State is not updated for state functions declared withRETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
and called with null
.
The optional FINALFUNC
is called just before the aggregate result is returned. It must take only one argument with typeSTYPE
. The return type of the FINALFUNC
may be a different type. A final function declared withRETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
means that the aggregate’s return value will benull
, if the last state is null
.
If no FINALFUNC
is defined, the overall return type of the aggregate function isSTYPE
. If a FINALFUNC
is defined, it is the return type of that function.
See the section on user-defined aggregates
DROP AGGREGATE
Syntax:
Sample:
The DROP AGGREGATE
statement removes an aggregate created using CREATE AGGREGATE
. You must specify the argument types of the aggregate to drop if there are multiple aggregates with the same name but a different signature (overloaded aggregates).
DROP AGGREGATE
with the optional IF EXISTS
keywords drops an aggregate if it exists, and does nothing if a function with the signature does not exist.
Signatures for user-defined aggregates follow the same rules
Data Manipulation
INSERT
Syntax:
Sample:
The INSERT
statement writes one or more columns for a given row in a table. Note that since a row is identified by itsPRIMARY KEY
, at least the columns composing it must be specified. The list of columns to insert to must be supplied when using theVALUES
syntax. When using the JSON
syntax, they are optional. See the section onINSERT JSON
Note that unlike in SQL, INSERT
does not check the prior existence of the row by default: the row is created if none existed before, and updated otherwise. Furthermore, there is no mean to know which of creation or update happened.
It is however possible to use the IF NOT EXISTS
condition to only insert if the row does not exist prior to the insertion. But please note that usingIF NOT EXISTS
will incur a non negligible performance cost (internally, Paxos will be used) so this should be used sparingly.
All updates for an INSERT
are applied atomically and in isolation.
Please refer to the UPDATE
section for information on the <option>
available and to thecollections section for use of <collection-literal>
. Also note thatINSERT
does not support counters, while UPDATE
does.
UPDATE
Syntax:
Sample:
The UPDATE
statement writes one or more columns for a given row in a table. The<where-clause>
is used to select the row to update and must include all columns composing thePRIMARY KEY
. Other columns values are specified through <assignment>
after theSET
keyword.
Note that unlike in SQL, UPDATE
does not check the prior existence of the row by default (except through the use of<condition>
, see below): the row is created if none existed before, and updated otherwise. Furthermore, there are no means to know whether a creation or update occurred.
It is however possible to use the conditions on some columns through IF
, in which case the row will not be updated unless the conditions are met. But, please note that usingIF
conditions will incur a non-negligible performance cost (internally, Paxos will be used) so this should be used sparingly.
In an UPDATE
statement, all updates within the same partition key are applied atomically and in isolation.
The c = c + 3
form of <assignment>
is used to increment/decrement counters. The identifier after the ‘=’ signmust be the same than the one before the ‘=’ sign (Only increment/decrement is supported on counters, not the assignment of a specific value).
The id = id + <collection-literal>
and id[value1] = value2
forms of<assignment>
are for collections. Please refer to the relevant section
The id.field = <term>
form of <assignemt>
is for setting the value of a single field on a non-frozen user-defined types.
<options>
The UPDATE
and INSERT
statements support the following options:
-
TIMESTAMP
: sets the timestamp for the operation. If not specified, the coordinator will use the current time (in microseconds) at the start of statement execution as the timestamp. This is usually a suitable default. -
TTL
: specifies an optional Time To Live (in seconds) for the inserted values. If set, the inserted values are automatically removed from the database after the specified time. Note that the TTL concerns the inserted values, not the columns themselves. This means that any subsequent update of the column will also reset the TTL (to whatever TTL is specified in that update). By default, values never expire. A TTL of 0 is equivalent to no TTL. If the table has a default_time_to_live, a TTL of 0 will remove the TTL for the inserted or updated values.
DELETE
Syntax:
Sample:
The DELETE
statement deletes columns and rows. If column names are provided directly after theDELETE
keyword, only those columns are deleted from the row indicated by the<where-clause>
. The id[value]
syntax in <selection>
is for non-frozen collections (please refer to thecollection section for more details). The id.field
syntax is for the deletion of non-frozen user-defined types. Otherwise, whole rows are removed. The<where-clause>
specifies which rows are to be deleted. Multiple rows may be deleted with one statement by using anIN
clause. A range of rows may be deleted using an inequality operator (such as>=
).
DELETE
supports the TIMESTAMP
option with the same semantics as theUPDATE
In a DELETE
statement, all deletions within the same partition key are applied atomically and in isolation.
A DELETE
operation can be conditional through the use of an IF
clause, similar to UPDATE
and INSERT
statements. However, as withINSERT
and UPDATE
statements, this will incur a non-negligible performance cost (internally, Paxos will be used) and so should be used sparingly.
BATCH
Syntax:
Sample:
The BATCH
statement group multiple modification statements (insertions/updates and deletions) into a single statement. It serves several purposes:
- It saves network round-trips between the client and the server (and sometimes between the server coordinator and the replicas) when batching multiple updates.
- All updates in a
BATCH
belonging to a given partition key are performed in isolation. - By default, all operations in the batch are performed as
LOGGED
, to ensure all mutations eventually complete (or none will). See the notes onUNLOGGED
Note that:
-
BATCH
statements may only contain UPDATE
, INSERT
andDELETE
statements. - Batches are not a full analogue for SQL transactions.
- If a timestamp is not specified for each operation, then all operations will be applied with the same timestamp. Due to Cassandra’s conflict resolution procedure in the case oftimestamp ties, operations may be applied in an order that is different from the order they are listed in the
BATCH
statement. To force a particular operation ordering, you must specify per-operation timestamps.
UNLOGGED
By default, Cassandra uses a batch log to ensure all operations in a batch eventually complete or none will (note however that operations are only isolated within a single partition).
There is a performance penalty for batch atomicity when a batch spans multiple partitions. If you do not want to incur this penalty, you can tell Cassandra to skip the batchlog with theUNLOGGED
option. If the UNLOGGED
option is used, a failed batch might leave the patch only partly applied.
COUNTER
Use the COUNTER
option for batched counter updates. Unlike other updates in Cassandra, counter updates are not idempotent.
<option>
BATCH
supports both the TIMESTAMP
option, with similar semantic to the one described in theUPDATE
statement (the timestamp applies to all the statement inside the batch). However, if used,TIMESTAMP
must not be used in the statements within the batch.
Queries
SELECT
Syntax:
Sample:
The SELECT
statements reads one or more columns for one or more rows in a table. It returns a result-set of rows, where each row contains the collection of columns corresponding to the query. If theJSON
keyword is used, the results for each row will contain only a single column named “json”. See the section onSELECT JSON
<select-clause>
The <select-clause>
determines which columns needs to be queried and returned in the result-set. It consists of either the comma-separated list of or the wildcard character (*
) to select all the columns defined for the table.
A <selector>
is either a column name to retrieve or a <function>
of one or more @@s. The function allowed are the same as for<term>
and are described in the function section. In addition to these generic functions, the WRITETIME
(resp.TTL
) function allows to select the timestamp of when the column was inserted (resp. the time to live (in seconds) for the column (or null if the column has no expiration set)) and theCAST
Any <selector>
can be aliased using AS
keyword (see examples). Please note that<where-clause>
and <order-by>
clause should refer to the columns by their original names and not by their aliases.
The COUNT
keyword can be used with parenthesis enclosing *
. If so, the query will return a single result: the number of rows matching the query. Note thatCOUNT(1)
is supported as an alias.
<where-clause>
The <where-clause>
specifies which rows must be queried. It is composed of relations on the columns that are part of thePRIMARY KEY
and/or have a secondary index
Not all relations are allowed in a query. For instance, non-equal relations (whereIN
is considered as an equal relation) on a partition key are not supported (but see the use of theTOKEN
method below to do non-equal queries on the partition key). Moreover, for a given partition key, the clustering columns induce an ordering of rows and relations on them is restricted to the relations that allow to select acontiguous (for the ordering) set of rows. For instance, given
The following query is allowed:
But the following one is not, as it does not select a contiguous set of rows (and we suppose no secondary indexes are set):
When specifying relations, the TOKEN
function can be used on the PARTITION KEY
column to query. In that case, rows will be selected based on the token of theirPARTITION_KEY
rather than on the value. Note that the token of a key depends on the partitioner in use, and that in particular the RandomPartitioner won’t yield a meaningful order. Also note that ordering partitioners always order token values by bytes (so even if the partition key is of type int, token(-1) > token(0)
in particular). Example:
Moreover, the IN
relation is only allowed on the last column of the partition key and on the last column of the full primary key.
It is also possible to “group” CLUSTERING COLUMNS
together in a relation using the tuple notation. For instance:
will request all rows that sorts after the one having “John's Blog” as blog_tile
and ‘2012-01-01’ forposted_at
in the clustering order. In particular, rows having a post_at <= '2012-01-01'
will be returned as long as their blog_title > 'John''s Blog'
, which wouldn’t be the case for:
The tuple notation may also be used for IN
clauses on CLUSTERING COLUMNS
:
The CONTAINS
operator may only be used on collection columns (lists, sets, and maps). In the case of maps,CONTAINS
applies to the map values. The CONTAINS KEY
operator may only be used on map columns and applies to the map keys.
<order-by>
The ORDER BY
option allows to select the order of the returned results. It takes as argument a list of column names along with the order for the column (ASC
for ascendant andDESC
for descendant, omitting the order being equivalent to ASC
). Currently the possible orderings are limited (which depends on the tableCLUSTERING ORDER
- if the table has been defined without any specific
CLUSTERING ORDER
, then then allowed orderings are the order induced by the clustering columns and the reverse of that one. - otherwise, the orderings allowed are the order of the
CLUSTERING ORDER
option and the reversed one.
<group-by>
The GROUP BY
option allows to condense into a single row all selected rows that share the same values for a set of columns.
Using the GROUP BY
option, it is only possible to group rows at the partition key level or at a clustering column level. By consequence, theGROUP BY
option only accept as arguments primary key column names in the primary key order. If a primary key column is restricted by an equality restriction it is not required to be present in theGROUP BY
clause.
Aggregate functions will produce a separate value for each group. If no GROUP BY
clause is specified, aggregates functions will produce a single value for all the rows.
If a column is selected without an aggregate function, in a statement with a GROUP BY
, the first value encounter in each group will be returned.
LIMIT
and PER PARTITION LIMIT
The LIMIT
option to a SELECT
statement limits the number of rows returned by a query, while thePER PARTITION LIMIT
option limits the number of rows returned for a given partition by the query. Note that both type of limit can used in the same statement.
ALLOW FILTERING
By default, CQL only allows select queries that don’t involve “filtering” server side, i.e. queries where we know that all (live) record read will be returned (maybe partly) in the result set. The reasoning is that those “non filtering” queries have predictable performance in the sense that they will execute in a time that is proportional to the amount of datareturned by the query (which can be controlled through LIMIT
).
The ALLOW FILTERING
option allows to explicitly allow (some) queries that require filtering. Please note that a query usingALLOW FILTERING
may thus have unpredictable performance (for the definition above), i.e. even a query that selects a handful of recordsmay exhibit performance that depends on the total amount of data stored in the cluster.
For instance, considering the following table holding user profiles with their year of birth (with a secondary index on it) and country of residence:
Then the following queries are valid:
because in both case, Cassandra guarantees that these queries performance will be proportional to the amount of data returned. In particular, if no users are born in 1981, then the second query performance will not depend of the number of user profile stored in the database (not directly at least: due to secondary index implementation consideration, this query may still depend on the number of node in the cluster, which indirectly depends on the amount of data stored. Nevertheless, the number of nodes will always be multiple number of magnitude lower than the number of user profile stored). Of course, both query may return very large result set in practice, but the amount of data returned can always be controlled by adding aLIMIT
.
However, the following query will be rejected:
because Cassandra cannot guarantee that it won’t have to scan large amount of data even if the result to those query is small. Typically, it will scan all the index entries for users born in 1981 even if only a handful are actually from France. However, if you “know what you are doing”, you can force the execution of this query by usingALLOW FILTERING
and so the following query is valid:
Database Roles
CREATE ROLE
Syntax:
Sample:
By default roles do not possess LOGIN
privileges or SUPERUSER
status.
Permissions on database resources are granted to roles; types of resources include keyspaces, tables, functions and roles themselves. Roles may be granted to other roles to create hierarchical permissions structures; in these hierarchies, permissions andSUPERUSER
status are inherited, but the LOGIN
privilege is not.
If a role has the LOGIN
privilege, clients may identify as that role when connecting. For the duration of that connection, the client will acquire any roles and privileges granted to that role.
Only a client with with the CREATE
permission on the database roles resource may issueCREATE ROLE
requests (see the relevant section below), unless the client is a SUPERUSER
. Role management in Cassandra is pluggable and custom implementations may support only a subset of the listed options.
Role names should be quoted if they contain non-alphanumeric characters.
Setting credentials for internal authentication
Use the WITH PASSWORD
clause to set a password for internal authentication, enclosing the password in single quotation marks.
If internal authentication has not been set up or the role does not have LOGIN
privileges, theWITH PASSWORD
clause is not necessary.
Creating a role conditionally
Attempting to create an existing role results in an invalid query condition unless theIF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If the option is used and the role exists, the statement is a no-op.
ALTER ROLE
Syntax:
Sample:
Conditions on executing ALTER ROLE
statements:
- A client must have
SUPERUSER
status to alter the SUPERUSER
status of another role - A client cannot alter the
SUPERUSER
status of any role it currently holds - A client can only modify certain properties of the role with which it identified at login (e.g.
PASSWORD
) - To modify properties of a role, the client must be granted
ALTER
permission
DROP ROLE
Syntax:
Sample:
DROP ROLE
requires the client to have DROP
permission on the role in question. In addition, client may not DROP
the role with which it identified at login. Finaly, only a client withSUPERUSER
status may DROP
another SUPERUSER
role.
Attempting to drop a role which does not exist results in an invalid query condition unless theIF EXISTS
option is used. If the option is used and the role does not exist the statement is a no-op.
GRANT ROLE
Syntax:
Sample:
This statement grants the report_writer
role to alice
. Any permissions granted toreport_writer
are also acquired by alice
.
Roles are modelled as a directed acyclic graph, so circular grants are not permitted. The following examples result in error conditions:
REVOKE ROLE
Syntax:
Sample:
This statement revokes the report_writer
role from alice
. Any permissions thatalice
has acquired via the report_writer
role are also revoked.
LIST ROLES
Syntax:
Sample:
Return all known roles in the system, this requires DESCRIBE
permission on the database roles resource.
Enumerate all roles granted to alice
, including those transitively aquired.
List all roles directly granted to bob
.
CREATE USER
Prior to the introduction of roles in Cassandra 2.2, authentication and authorization were based around the concept of aUSER
. For backward compatibility, the legacy syntax has been preserved withUSER
centric statments becoming synonyms for the ROLE
based equivalents.
Syntax:
Sample:
CREATE USER
is equivalent to CREATE ROLE
where the LOGIN
option is true
. So, the following pairs of statements are equivalent:
ALTER USER
Syntax:
DROP USER
Syntax:
Sample:
LIST USERS
Syntax:
Sample:
This statement is equivalent to
but only roles with the LOGIN
privilege are included in the output.
Data Control
Permissions
Permissions on resources are granted to roles; there are several different types of resources in Cassandra and each type is modelled hierarchically:
- The hierarchy of Data resources, Keyspaces and Tables has the structure
ALL KEYSPACES
-> KEYSPACE
-> TABLE
- Function resources have the structure
ALL FUNCTIONS
-> KEYSPACE
->FUNCTION
- Resources representing roles have the structure
ALL ROLES
-> ROLE
- Resources representing JMX ObjectNames, which map to sets of MBeans/MXBeans, have the structure
ALL MBEANS
-> MBEAN
Permissions can be granted at any level of these hierarchies and they flow downwards. So granting a permission on a resource higher up the chain automatically grants that same permission on all resources lower down. For example, grantingSELECT
on a KEYSPACE
automatically grants it on all TABLES
in that KEYSPACE
. Likewise, granting a permission on ALL FUNCTIONS
grants it on every defined function, regardless of which keyspace it is scoped in. It is also possible to grant permissions on all functions scoped to a particular keyspace.
Modifications to permissions are visible to existing client sessions; that is, connections need not be re-established following permissions changes.
The full set of available permissions is:
-
CREATE
-
ALTER
-
DROP
-
SELECT
-
MODIFY
-
AUTHORIZE
-
DESCRIBE
-
EXECUTE
Not all permissions are applicable to every type of resource. For instance, EXECUTE
is only relevant in the context of functions or mbeans; granting EXECUTE
on a resource representing a table is nonsensical. Attempting to GRANT
a permission on resource to which it cannot be applied results in an error response. The following illustrates which permissions can be granted on which types of resource, and which statements are enabled by that permission.
permission | resource | operations |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | Call getter methods on any mbean |
| | Call getter methods on any mbean matching a wildcard pattern |
| | Call getter methods on named mbean |
| | |
| | == @DELETE@ on any table in keyspace == |
| | |
| | Call setter methods on any mbean |
| | Call setter methods on any mbean matching a wildcard pattern |
| | Call setter methods on named mbean |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| @ALL MBEANS | Retrieve metadata about any mbean from the platform’s MBeanServer |
| @MBEANS | Retrieve metadata about any mbean matching a wildcard patter from the platform’s MBeanServer |
| @MBEAN | Retrieve metadata about a named mbean from the platform’s MBeanServer |
| | use of any function in |
| | use of any function in keyspace in |
| | use of function in |
| | Execute operations on any mbean |
| | Execute operations on any mbean matching a wildcard pattern |
| | Execute operations on named mbean |
GRANT PERMISSION
Syntax:
Sample:
This gives any user with the role data_reader
permission to executeSELECT
statements on any table across all keyspaces
This give any user with the role data_writer
permission to performUPDATE
, INSERT
, UPDATE
, DELETE
andTRUNCATE
queries on all tables in the keyspace1
keyspace
This gives any user with the schema_owner
role permissions to DROP
keyspace1.table1
.
This grants any user with the report_writer
role permission to executeSELECT
, INSERT
and UPDATE
queries which use the functionkeyspace1.user_function( int )
This grants any user with the role_admin
role permission to view any and all roles in the system with aLIST ROLES
statement
GRANT ALL
When the GRANT ALL
form is used, the appropriate set of permissions is determined automatically based on the target resource.
Automatic Granting
When a resource is created, via a CREATE KEYSPACE
, CREATE TABLE
,CREATE FUNCTION
, CREATE AGGREGATE
or CREATE ROLE
statement, the creator (the role the database user who issues the statement is identified as), is automatically granted all applicable permissions on the new resource.
REVOKE PERMISSION
Syntax:
LIST PERMISSIONS
Syntax:
Show all permissions granted to alice
, including those acquired transitively from any other roles.
Show all permissions on keyspace1.table1
granted to bob
, including those acquired transitively from any other roles. This also includes any permissions higher up the resource hierarchy which can be applied tokeyspace1.table1
. For example, should bob
have ALTER
permission onkeyspace1
, that would be included in the results of this query. Adding theNORECURSIVE
switch restricts the results to only those permissions which were directly granted tobob
or one of bob
's roles.
Show any permissions granted to carlos
or any of carlos
's roles, limited toSELECT
permissions on any resource.
Data Types
CQL supports a rich set of data types for columns defined in a table, including collection types. On top of those native
and collection types, users can also provide custom types (through a JAVA class extendingAbstractType
loadable by
Cassandra). The syntax of types is thus:
Note that the native types are keywords and as such are case-insensitive. They are however not reserved ones.
The following table gives additional informations on the native data types, and on which kind ofconstants
type | constants supported | description |
| strings | ASCII character string |
| integers | 64-bit signed long |
| blobs | Arbitrary bytes (no validation) |
| booleans | true or false |
| integers | Counter column (64-bit signed value). See Counters |
| integers, strings | A date (with no corresponding time value). See Working with dates |
| integers, floats | Variable-precision decimal |
| integers | 64-bit IEEE-754 floating point |
| integers, floats | 32-bit IEEE-754 floating point |
| strings | An IP address. It can be either 4 bytes long (IPv4) or 16 bytes long (IPv6). There is no |
| integers | 32-bit signed int |
| integers | 16-bit signed int |
| strings | UTF8 encoded string |
| integers, strings | A time with nanosecond precision. See Working with time |
| integers, strings | A timestamp. Strings constant are allow to input timestamps as dates, see Working with timestamps |
| uuids | Type 1 UUID. This is generally used as a “conflict-free” timestamp. Also see thefunctions on Timeuuid |
| integers | 8-bit signed int |
| uuids | Type 1 or type 4 UUID |
| strings | UTF8 encoded string |
| integers | Arbitrary-precision integer |
For more information on how to use the collection types, see the Working with collections
Working with timestamps
Values of the timestamp
type are encoded as 64-bit signed integers representing a number of milliseconds since the standard base time known as “the epoch”: January 1 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT.
Timestamp can be input in CQL as simple long integers, giving the number of milliseconds since the epoch, as defined above.
They can also be input as string literals in any of the following ISO 8601 formats, each representing the time and date Mar 2, 2011, at 04:05:00 AM, GMT.:
-
2011-02-03 04:05+0000
-
2011-02-03 04:05:00+0000
-
2011-02-03 04:05:00.000+0000
-
2011-02-03T04:05+0000
-
2011-02-03T04:05:00+0000
-
2011-02-03T04:05:00.000+0000
The +0000
above is an RFC 822 4-digit time zone specification; +0000
refers to GMT. US Pacific Standard Time is -0800
. The time zone may be omitted if desired— the date will be interpreted as being in the time zone under which the coordinating Cassandra node is configured.
-
2011-02-03 04:05
-
2011-02-03 04:05:00
-
2011-02-03 04:05:00.000
-
2011-02-03T04:05
-
2011-02-03T04:05:00
-
2011-02-03T04:05:00.000
There are clear difficulties inherent in relying on the time zone configuration being as expected, though, so it is recommended that the time zone always be specified for timestamps when feasible.
The time of day may also be omitted, if the date is the only piece that matters:
-
2011-02-03
-
2011-02-03+0000
In that case, the time of day will default to 00:00:00, in the specified or default time zone.
Working with dates
Values of the date
type are encoded as 32-bit unsigned integers representing a number of days with “the epoch” at the center of the range (2^31). Epoch is January 1st, 1970
A date can be input in CQL as an unsigned integer as defined above.
They can also be input as string literals in the following format:
-
2014-01-01
Working with time
Values of the time
type are encoded as 64-bit signed integers representing the number of nanoseconds since midnight.
A time can be input in CQL as simple long integers, giving the number of nanoseconds since midnight.
They can also be input as string literals in any of the following formats:
-
08:12:54
-
08:12:54.123
-
08:12:54.123456
-
08:12:54.123456789
Counters
The counter
type is used to define counter columns. A counter column is a column whose value is a 64-bit signed integer and on which 2 operations are supported: incrementation and decrementation (seeUPDATE
for syntax). Note the value of a counter cannot be set. A counter doesn’t exist until first incremented/decremented, and the first incrementation/decrementation is made as if the previous value was 0. Deletion of counter columns is supported but have some limitations (see the Cassandra Wiki for more information).
The use of the counter type is limited in the following way:
- It cannot be used for column that is part of the
PRIMARY KEY
of a table. - A table that contains a counter can only contain counters. In other words, either all the columns of a table outside the
PRIMARY KEY
have the counter type, or none of them have it.
Working with collections
Noteworthy characteristics
Collections are meant for storing/denormalizing relatively small amount of data. They work well for things like “the phone numbers of a given user”, “labels applied to an email”, etc. But when items are expected to grow unbounded (“all the messages sent by a given user”, “events registered by a sensor”, ...), then collections are not appropriate anymore and a specific table (with clustering columns) should be used. Concretely, collections have the following limitations:
- Collections are always read in their entirety (and reading one is not paged internally).
- Collections cannot have more than 65535 elements. More precisely, while it may be possible to insert more than 65535 elements, it is not possible to read more than the 65535 first elements (seeCASSANDRA-5428 for details).
- While insertion operations on sets and maps never incur a read-before-write internally, some operations on lists do (see the section on lists below for details). It is thus advised to prefer sets over lists when possible.
Please note that while some of those limitations may or may not be loosen in the future, the general rule that collections are for denormalizing small amount of data is meant to stay.
Maps
A map
is a typed set of key-value pairs, where keys are unique. Furthermore, note that the map are internally sorted by their keys and will thus always be returned in that order. To create a column of typemap
, use the map
keyword suffixed with comma-separated key and value types, enclosed in angle brackets. For example:
Writing map
data is accomplished with a JSON-inspired syntax. To write a record usingINSERT
, specify the entire map as a JSON-style associative array. Note: This form will always replace the entire map.
Adding or updating key-values of a (potentially) existing map can be accomplished either by subscripting the map column in anUPDATE
statement or by adding a new map literal:
Note that TTLs are allowed for both INSERT
and UPDATE
, but in both case the TTL set only apply to the newly inserted/updatedvalues. In other words,
will only apply the TTL to the { 'color' : 'green' }
record, the rest of the map remaining unaffected.
Deleting a map record is done with:
Sets
A set
is a typed collection of unique values. Sets are ordered by their values. To create a column of typeset
, use the set
keyword suffixed with the value type enclosed in angle brackets. For example:
Writing a set
is accomplished by comma separating the set values, and enclosing them in curly braces.Note: An INSERT
will always replace the entire set.
Adding and removing values of a set can be accomplished with an UPDATE
by adding/removing new set values to an existingset
column.
As with maps, TTLs if used only apply to the newly inserted/updated values.
Lists
A list
is a typed collection of non-unique values where elements are ordered by there position in the list. To create a column of typelist
, use the list
keyword suffixed with the value type enclosed in angle brackets. For example:
Do note that as explained below, lists have some limitations and performance considerations to take into account, and it is advised to prefersets
Writing list
data is accomplished with a JSON-style syntax. To write a record usingINSERT
, specify the entire list as a JSON array. Note: An INSERT
will always replace the entire list.
Adding (appending or prepending) values to a list can be accomplished by adding a new JSON-style array to an existinglist
column.
It should be noted that append and prepend are not idempotent operations. This means that if during an append or a prepend the operation timeout, it is not always safe to retry the operation (as this could result in the record appended or prepended twice).
Lists also provides the following operation: setting an element by its position in the list, removing an element by its position in the list and remove all the occurrence of a given value in the list.However, and contrarily to all the other collection operations, these three operations induce an internal read before the update, and will thus typically have slower performance characteristics. Those operations have the following syntax:
As with maps, TTLs if used only apply to the newly inserted/updated values.
Functions
CQL3 distinguishes between built-in functions (so called ‘native functions’) anduser-defined functions. CQL3 includes several native functions, described below:
Cast
The cast
function can be used to converts one native datatype to another.
The following table describes the conversions supported by the cast
function. Cassandra will silently ignore any cast converting a datatype into its own datatype.
from | to |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
The conversions rely strictly on Java’s semantics. For example, the double value 1 will be converted to the text value ‘1.0’.
Token
The token
function allows to compute the token for a given partition key. The exact signature of the token function depends on the table concerned and of the partitioner used by the cluster.
The type of the arguments of the token
depend on the type of the partition key columns. The return type depend on the partitioner in use:
- For Murmur3Partitioner, the return type is
bigint
. - For RandomPartitioner, the return type is
varint
. - For ByteOrderedPartitioner, the return type is
blob
.
For instance, in a cluster using the default Murmur3Partitioner, if a table is defined by
then the token
function will take a single argument of type text
(in that case, the partition key is userid
(there is no clustering columns so the partition key is the same than the primary key)), and the return type will bebigint
.
Uuid
The uuid
function takes no parameters and generates a random type 4 uuid suitable for use in INSERT or SET statements.
Timeuuid functions
now
The now
function takes no arguments and generates, on the coordinator node, a new unique timeuuid (at the time where the statement using it is executed). Note that this method is useful for insertion but is largely non-sensical inWHERE
clauses. For instance, a query of the form
will never return any result by design, since the value returned by now()
is guaranteed to be unique.
minTimeuuid
and maxTimeuuid
The minTimeuuid
(resp. maxTimeuuid
) function takes atimestamp
value t
(which can be either a timestamp or a date string ) and return a fake timeuuid
corresponding to thesmallest (resp. biggest) possible timeuuid
having for timestampt
. So for instance:
will select all rows where the timeuuid
column t
is strictly older than ‘2013-01-01 00:05+0000’ but strictly younger than ‘2013-02-02 10:00+0000’. Please note thatt >= maxTimeuuid('2013-01-01 00:05+0000')
would still not select atimeuuid
generated exactly at ‘2013-01-01 00:05+0000’ and is essentially equivalent tot > maxTimeuuid('2013-01-01 00:05+0000')
.
Warning: We called the values generated by minTimeuuid
andmaxTimeuuid
fake UUID because they do no respect the Time-Based UUID generation process specified by theRFC 4122. In particular, the value returned by these 2 methods will not be unique. This means you should only use those methods for querying (as in the example above). Inserting the result of those methods is almost certainly a bad idea.
Time conversion functions
A number of functions are provided to “convert” a timeuuid
, a timestamp
or a date
into another native
type.
function name | input type | description |
| | Converts the |
| | Converts the |
| | Converts the |
| | Converts the |
| | Converts the |
| | Converts the |
| | Converts the |
| | Similar to |
| | Similar to |
Blob conversion functions
A number of functions are provided to “convert” the native types into binary data (blob
). For every<native-type>
type
supported by CQL3 (a notable exceptions isblob
, for obvious reasons), the function typeAsBlob
takes a argument of typetype
and return it as a blob
. Conversely, the function blobAsType
takes a 64-bit blob
argument and convert it to a bigint
value. And so for instance, bigintAsBlob(3)
is 0x0000000000000003
andblobAsBigint(0x0000000000000003)
is 3
.
Aggregates
Aggregate functions work on a set of rows. They receive values for each row and returns one value for the whole set.
If normal
columns, scalar functions
, UDT
fields,writetime
or ttl
are selected together with aggregate functions, the values returned for them will be the ones of the first row matching the query.
CQL3 distinguishes between built-in aggregates (so called ‘native aggregates’) anduser-defined aggregates. CQL3 includes several native aggregates, described below:
Count
The count
function can be used to count the rows returned by a query. Example:
It also can be used to count the non null value of a given column. Example:
Max and Min
The max
and min
functions can be used to compute the maximum and the minimum value returned by a query for a given column.
Sum
The sum
function can be used to sum up all the values returned by a query for a given column.
Avg
The avg
function can be used to compute the average of all the values returned by a query for a given column.
User-Defined Functions
User-defined functions allow execution of user-provided code in Cassandra. By default, Cassandra supports defining functions inJava and JavaScript. Support for other JSR 223 compliant scripting languages (such as Python, Ruby, and Scala) has been removed in 3.0.11.
UDFs are part of the Cassandra schema. As such, they are automatically propagated to all nodes in the cluster.
UDFs can be overloaded - i.e. multiple UDFs with different argument types but the same function name. Example:
User-defined functions are susceptible to all of the normal problems with the chosen programming language. Accordingly, implementations should be safe against null pointer exceptions, illegal arguments, or any other potential source of exceptions. An exception during function execution will result in the entire statement failing.
It is valid to use complex types like collections, tuple types and user-defined types as argument and return types. Tuple types and user-defined types are handled by the conversion functions of the DataStax Java Driver. Please see the documentation of the Java Driver for details on handling tuple types and user-defined types.
Arguments for functions can be literals or terms. Prepared statement placeholders can be used, too.
Note that you can use the double-quoted string syntax to enclose the UDF source code. For example:
User-defined functions can be used in SELECT
, INSERT
and UPDATE
The implicitly available udfContext
field (or binding for script UDFs) provides the neccessary functionality to create new UDT and tuple values.
The definition of the UDFContext
interface can be found in the Apache Cassandra source code fororg.apache.cassandra.cql3.functions.UDFContext
.
Java UDFs already have some imports for common interfaces and classes defined. These imports are:
Please note, that these convenience imports are not available for script UDFs.
See CREATE FUNCTION
and DROP FUNCTION
.
User-Defined Aggregates
User-defined aggregates allow creation of custom aggregate functions using UDFs. Common examples of aggregate functions are count, min, andmax.
Each aggregate requires an initial state (INITCOND
, which defaults tonull
) of type STYPE
. The first argument of the state function must have typeSTYPE
. The remaining arguments of the state function must match the types of the user-defined aggregate arguments. The state function is called once for each row, and the value returned by the state function becomes the new state. After all rows are processed, the optional FINALFUNC
is executed with last state value as its argument.
STYPE
is mandatory in order to be able to distinguish possibly overloaded versions of the state and/or final function (since the overload can appear after creation of the aggregate).
User-defined aggregates can be used in SELECT
A complete working example for user-defined aggregates (assuming that a keyspace has been selected using theUSE
See CREATE AGGREGATE
and DROP AGGREGATE
.
JSON Support
Cassandra 2.2 introduces JSON support to SELECT
and INSERT
SELECT JSON
With SELECT
statements, the new JSON
keyword can be used to return each row as a singleJSON
encoded map. The remainder of the SELECT
statment behavior is the same.
The result map keys are the same as the column names in a normal result set. For example, a statement like "SELECT JSON a, ttl(b) FROM ...
" would result in a map with keys"a"
and "ttl(b)"
. However, this is one notable exception: for symmetry withINSERT JSON
behavior, case-sensitive column names with upper-case letters will be surrounded with double quotes. For example, "SELECT JSON myColumn FROM ...
" would result in a map key"\"myColumn\""
(note the escaped quotes).
The map values will JSON
-encoded representations (as described below) of the result set values.
INSERT JSON
With INSERT
statements, the new JSON
keyword can be used to enable inserting aJSON
encoded map as a single row. The format of the JSON
map should generally match that returned by aSELECT JSON
statement on the same table. In particular, case-sensitive column names should be surrounded with double quotes. For example, to insert into a table with two columns named “myKey” and “value”, you would do the following:
Any columns which are ommitted from the JSON
map will be defaulted to aNULL
value (which will result in a tombstone being created).
JSON Encoding of Cassandra Data Types
Where possible, Cassandra will represent and accept data types in their nativeJSON
representation. Cassandra will also accept string representations matching the CQL literal format for all single-field types. For example, floats, ints, UUIDs, and dates can be represented by CQL literal strings. However, compound types, such as collections, tuples, and user-defined types must be represented by native JSON
collections (maps and lists) or a JSON-encoded string representation of the collection.
The following table describes the encodings that Cassandra will accept in INSERT JSON
values (and fromJson()
arguments) as well as the format Cassandra will use when returning data forSELECT JSON
statements (and fromJson()
):
type | formats accepted | return format | notes |
| string | string | Uses JSON’s |
| integer, string | integer | String must be valid 64 bit integer |
| string | string | String should be 0x followed by an even number of hex digits |
| boolean, string | boolean | String must be “true” or "false" |
| string | string | Date in format |
| integer, float, string | float | May exceed 32 or 64-bit IEEE-754 floating point precision in client-side decoder |
| integer, float, string | float | String must be valid integer or float |
| integer, float, string | float | String must be valid integer or float |
| string | string | IPv4 or IPv6 address |
| integer, string | integer | String must be valid 32 bit integer |
| list, string | list | Uses JSON’s native list representation |
| map, string | map | Uses JSON’s native map representation |
| integer, string | integer | String must be valid 16 bit integer |
| list, string | list | Uses JSON’s native list representation |
| string | string | Uses JSON’s |
| string | string | Time of day in format |
| integer, string | string | A timestamp. Strings constant are allow to input timestamps as dates, see Working with dates below for more information. Datestamps with format |
| string | string | Type 1 UUID. See Constants |
| integer, string | integer | String must be valid 8 bit integer |
| list, string | list | Uses JSON’s native list representation |
| map, string | map | Uses JSON’s native map representation with field names as keys |
| string | string | See Constants |
| string | string | Uses JSON’s |
| integer, string | integer | Variable length; may overflow 32 or 64 bit integers in client-side decoder |
The fromJson() Function
The fromJson()
function may be used similarly to INSERT JSON
, but for a single column value. It may only be used in theVALUES
clause of an INSERT
statement or as one of the column values in anUPDATE
, DELETE
, or SELECT
statement. For example, it cannot be used in the selection clause of aSELECT
statement.
The toJson() Function
The toJson()
function may be used similarly to SELECT JSON
, but for a single column value. It may only be used in the selection clause of aSELECT
statement.
Appendix A: CQL Keywords
CQL distinguishes between reserved and non-reserved keywords. Reserved keywords cannot be used as identifier, they are truly reserved for the language (but one can enclose a reserved keyword by double-quotes to use it as an identifier). Non-reserved keywords however only have a specific meaning in certain context but can used as identifer otherwise. The onlyraison d'être of these non-reserved keywords is convenience: some keyword are non-reserved when it was always easy for the parser to decide whether they were used as keywords or not.
Keyword | Reserved? |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| no |
| yes |
| yes |
| no |
Appendix B: CQL Reserved Types
The following type names are not currently used by CQL, but are reserved for potential future use. User-defined types may not use reserved type names as their name.
type |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Changes
The following describes the changes in each version of CQL.
3.4.3
- Support for
GROUP BY
. See <group-by>
(see CASSANDRA-10707).
3.4.2
-
INSERT/UPDATE options
-
ALTER TABLE
ADD
and DROP
now allow mutiple columns to be added/removed - New
PER PARTITION LIMIT
option (see CASSANDRA-7017). - User-defined functions can now instantiate
UDTValue
and TupleValue
instances via the new UDFContext
interface (seeCASSANDRA-10818). - “User-defined types”#createTypeStmt may now be stored in a non-frozen form, allowing individual fields to be updated and deleted in
UPDATE
statements and DELETE
statements, respectively. (CASSANDRA-7423)
3.4.1
- Adds
CAST
functions. See Cast
.
3.4.0
- Support for materialized views
-
DELETE
support for inequality expressions andIN
restrictions on any primary key columns -
UPDATE
support forIN
restrictions on any primary key columns
3.3.1
- The syntax
TRUNCATE TABLE X
is now accepted as an alias for TRUNCATE X
3.3.0
- Adds new aggregates
- User-defined functions are now supported through
CREATE FUNCTION
and DROP FUNCTION
. - User-defined aggregates are now supported through
CREATE AGGREGATE
and DROP AGGREGATE
. - Allows double-dollar enclosed strings literals as an alternative to single-quote enclosed strings.
- Introduces Roles to supercede user based authentication and access control
-
Date
andTime
-
JSON
-
Tinyint
and Smallint
data types have been added - Adds new time conversion functions and deprecate
dateOf
and unixTimestampOf
. See Time conversion functions
3.2.0
- User-defined types are now supported through
CREATE TYPE
, ALTER TYPE
, and DROP TYPE
-
CREATE INDEX
now supports indexing collection columns, including indexing the keys of map collections through thekeys()
function - Indexes on collections may be queried using the new
CONTAINS
andCONTAINS KEY
operators - Tuple types were added to hold fixed-length sets of typed positional fields (see the section ontypes
-
DROP INDEX
3.1.7
-
SELECT
statements now support selecting multiple rows in a single partition using anIN
clause on combinations of clustering columns. See SELECT WHERE -
IF NOT EXISTS
and IF EXISTS
syntax is now supported byCREATE USER
and DROP USER
statmenets, respectively.
3.1.6
- A new
uuid
method - Support for
DELETE ... IF EXISTS
syntax.
3.1.5
- It is now possible to group clustering columns in a relatiion, see SELECT WHERE
- Added support for
STATIC
columns, see static in CREATE TABLE.
3.1.4
-
CREATE INDEX
now allows specifying options when creating CUSTOM indexes (seeCREATE INDEX reference
3.1.3
- Millisecond precision formats have been added to the timestamp parser (see working with dates
3.1.2
-
NaN
and Infinity
has been added as valid float contants. They are now reserved keywords. In the unlikely case you we using them as a column identifier (or keyspace/table one), you will noew need to double quote them (seequote identifiers
3.1.1
-
SELECT
statement now allows listing the partition keys (using theDISTINCT
modifier). See CASSANDRA-4536. - The syntax
c IN ?
is now supported in WHERE
clauses. In that case, the value expected for the bind variable will be a list of whatever typec
is. - It is now possible to use named bind variables (using
:name
instead of?
).
3.1.0
- ALTER TABLE
DROP
option has been reenabled for CQL3 tables and has new semantics now: the space formerly used by dropped columns will now be eventually reclaimed (post-compaction). You should not readd previously dropped columns unless you use timestamps with microsecond precision (see CASSANDRA-3919 for more details). -
SELECT
statement now supports aliases in select clause. Aliases in WHERE and ORDER BY clauses are not supported. See thesection on select -
CREATE
statements for KEYSPACE
, TABLE
andINDEX
now supports an IF NOT EXISTS
condition. Similarly,DROP
statements support a IF EXISTS
condition. -
INSERT
statements optionally supports a IF NOT EXISTS
condition andUPDATE
supports IF
conditions.
3.0.5
-
SELECT
, UPDATE
, and DELETE
statements now allow emptyIN
relations (see CASSANDRA-5626).
3.0.4
- Updated the syntax for custom secondary indexes.
- Non-equal condition on the partition key are now never supported, even for ordering partitioner as this was not correct (the order wasnot the one of the type of the partition key). Instead, the
token
method should always be used for range queries on the partition key (seeWHERE clauses
3.0.3
- Support for custom secondary indexes
3.0.2
- Type validation for the constants has been fixed. For instance, the implementation used to allow
'2'
as a valid value for an int
column (interpreting it has the equivalent of2
), or 42
as a valid blob
value (in which case42
was interpreted as an hexadecimal representation of the blob). This is no longer the case, type validation of constants is now more strict. See thedata types - The type validation fixed of the previous point has lead to the introduction ofblobs constants to allow inputing blobs. Do note that while inputing blobs as strings constant is still supported by this version (to allow smoother transition to blob constant), it is now deprecated (in particular thedata types
- A number of functions to convert native types to blobs have also been introduced. Furthermore the token function is now also allowed in select clauses. See thesection on functions
3.0.1
- Date strings (and timestamps) are no longer accepted as valid
timeuuid
values. Doing so was a bug in the sense that date string are not validtimeuuid
, and it was thus resulting in confusing behaviors. However, the following new methods have been added to help working withtimeuuid
: now
, minTimeuuid
, maxTimeuuid
,dateOf
and unixTimestampOf
. See the section dedicated to these methods - “Float constants”#constants now support the exponent notation. In other words,
4.2E10
is now a valid floating point value.
Versioning
Versioning of the CQL language adheres to the Semantic Versioning guidelines. Versions take the form X.Y.Z where X, Y, and Z are integer values representing major, minor, and patch level respectively. There is no correlation between Cassandra release versions and the CQL language version.
version | description |
Major | The major version must be bumped when backward incompatible changes are introduced. This should rarely occur. |
Minor | Minor version increments occur when new, but backward compatible, functionality is introduced. |
Patch | The patch version is incremented when bugs are fixed. |