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CQL is a typed language and supports a rich set of data types, including native types and collection types.
cql_type: `native_type` | `collection_type` | `user_defined_type` | `tuple_type`
Bytes can be input with:
a hexadecimal literal.
one of the typeAsBlob()
cql functions. There is such a function for each native type.
For example:
INSERT INTO blobstore (id, data) VALUES (4375645, 0xabf7971528cfae76e00000008bacdf);
INSERT INTO blobstore (id, data) VALUES (4375645, intAsBlob(33));
The native types supported by CQL are:
native_type: ASCII
: | BIGINT
: | BLOB
: | BOOLEAN
: | COUNTER
: | DATE
: | DECIMAL
: | DOUBLE
: | DURATION
: | FLOAT
: | INET
: | INT
: | SMALLINT
: | TEXT
: | TIME
: | TIMESTAMP
: | TIMEUUID
: | TINYINT
: | UUID
: | VARCHAR
: | VARINT
The following table gives additional information on the native data types and which kind of constants each type supports:
type |
constants supported |
description |
---|---|---|
|
|
ASCII character string |
|
|
64-bit signed long |
|
|
Arbitrary bytes (no validation). See Working with Bytes for details |
|
|
Either |
|
|
Counter column (64-bit signed value). See Counters for details |
|
|
A date (with no corresponding time value). See Working with dates below for details |
|
|
Variable-precision decimal |
|
|
64-bit IEEE-754 floating point |
|
|
A duration with nanosecond precision. See Working with durations below for details |
|
|
32-bit IEEE-754 floating point |
|
|
An IP address, either IPv4 (4 bytes long) or IPv6 (16 bytes long). Note that
there is no |
|
|
32-bit signed int |
|
|
16-bit signed int |
|
|
UTF8 encoded string |
|
|
A time (with no corresponding date value) with nanosecond precision. See Working with times below for details |
|
|
A timestamp (date and time) with millisecond precision. See Working with timestamps below for details |
|
|
Version 1 UUID, generally used as a “conflict-free” timestamp. See Working with UUIDs for details |
|
|
8-bit signed int |
|
|
A UUID (of any version). See Working with UUIDs for details |
|
|
Arbitrary-precision integer |
The counter
type is used to define counter columns. A counter column is a column with a 64-bit signed
integer value and on which two operations are supported: incrementing and decrementing (see the UPDATE statement for syntax). Note that the value of a counter cannot be set: a counter does not exist until first
incremented/decremented, and that first increment/decrement is made as if the prior value was 0.
Counters have a number of important limitations:
They cannot be used for columns 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.
Counters do not support expiring data with Time to Live (TTL).
The deletion of counters is supported but is only guaranteed to work the first time you delete a counter. In other words, you should not re-update a counter that you have deleted (if you do, proper behavior is not guaranteed).
Counter updates are, by nature, not idempotent. An important consequence is that if a counter update fails unexpectedly (timeout or loss of connection to the coordinator node), the client has no way to know if the update has been applied or not. In particular, replaying the update may or may not lead to an overcount.
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 1st 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT.
Timestamps can be input in CQL either using their value as an integer
, or using a string
that
represents an ISO 8601 date. For instance, all of the values below are
valid timestamp
values for Mar 2, 2011, at 04:05:00 AM, GMT:
1299038700000
'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 ('2011-02-03 04:05:00'
), and if so, the date will be interpreted
as being in the time zone under which the coordinating Scylla node is configured. However, there are difficulties
inherent in relying on the time zone configuration as expected, so it is recommended that the time zone always be
specified for timestamps when feasible.
The time of day may also be omitted ('2011-02-03'
or '2011-02-03+0000'
), in which case the time of day will
default to 00:00:00 in the specified or default time zone. However, if only the date part is relevant, consider using
the date type.
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.
As for timestamp, a date can be input either as an integer
or using a date
string
. In the latter case, the format should be yyyy-mm-dd
(so '2011-02-03'
, for instance).
Values of the time
type are encoded as 64-bit signed integers representing the number of nanoseconds since midnight.
As for timestamp, time can be input either as an integer
or using a string
representing the time. In the latter case, the format should be hh:mm:ss[.fffffffff]
(where the sub-second precision
is optional and if provided, can be less than the nanosecond). So, for instance, the following are valid inputs for a
time:
'08:12:54'
'08:12:54.123'
'08:12:54.123456'
'08:12:54.123456789'
Values of the duration
type are encoded as three signed integers of variable lengths. The first integer represents the
number of months, the second the number of days, and the third the number of nanoseconds. This is due to the fact that
the number of days in a month can change, and a day can have 23 or 25 hours depending on the daylight saving.
Internally, the number of months and days is decoded as 32 bits integers, whereas the number of nanoseconds is decoded
as a 64 bits integer.
A duration can be input as:
(quantity unit)+
like 12h30m
where the unit can be:
y
: years (12 months)
mo
: months (1 month)
w
: weeks (7 days)
d
: days (1 day)
h
: hours (3,600,000,000,000 nanoseconds)
m
: minutes (60,000,000,000 nanoseconds)
s
: seconds (1,000,000,000 nanoseconds)
ms
: milliseconds (1,000,000 nanoseconds)
us
or µs
: microseconds (1000 nanoseconds)
ns
: nanoseconds (1 nanosecond)
ISO 8601 format: P[n]Y[n]M[n]DT[n]H[n]M[n]S or P[n]W
ISO 8601 alternative format: P[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD]T[hh]:[mm]:[ss]
For example:
INSERT INTO RiderResults (rider, race, result) VALUES ('Christopher Froome', 'Tour de France', 89h4m48s);
INSERT INTO RiderResults (rider, race, result) VALUES ('BARDET Romain', 'Tour de France', PT89H8M53S);
INSERT INTO RiderResults (rider, race, result) VALUES ('QUINTANA Nairo', 'Tour de France', P0000-00-00T89:09:09);
Duration columns cannot be used in a table’s PRIMARY KEY
. This limitation is due to the fact that
durations cannot be ordered. It is effectively not possible to know if 1mo
is greater than 29d
without a date
context.
A 1d
duration does not equal to a 24h
one as the duration type has been created to be able to support daylight
saving.
The values of the UUID type are encoded as 32 hex (base 16) digits, in five groups separated by hyphens (-), in the form 8-4-4-4-12 for a total of 36 characters (32 hexadecimal characters and 4 hyphens).
Use an integer literal and not a string. For example 123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426655440000
and not '123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426655440000'
.
CQL supports 3 kinds of collections: Maps, Sets and Lists. The types of those collections is defined by:
collection_type: MAP '<' `cql_type` ',' `cql_type` '>'
: | SET '<' `cql_type` '>'
: | LIST '<' `cql_type` '>'
and their values can be input using collection literals:
collection_literal: `map_literal` | `set_literal` | `list_literal`
map_literal: '{' [ `term` ':' `term` (',' `term` : `term`)* ] '}'
set_literal: '{' [ `term` (',' `term`)* ] '}'
list_literal: '[' [ `term` (',' `term`)* ] ']'
Note that neither bind_marker
nor NULL
are supported inside collection literals.
Collections are meant for storing/denormalizing a 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
messages sent by a user”, “events registered by a sensor”…), then collections are not appropriate, and a specific table
(with clustering columns) should be used. A collection can be frozen or non-frozen.
A non-frozen collection can be modified, i.e., have an element added or removed. A
frozen collection can only be updated as a whole. By default, a collection is non-frozen.
To declare a frozen collection, use FROZEN
keyword:
frozen_collection_type: FROZEN '<' MAP '<' `cql_type` ',' `cql_type` '>' '>'
: | FROZEN '<' SET '<' `cql_type` '>' '>'
: | FROZEN '<' LIST '<' `cql_type` '>' '>'
Non-frozen collections have the following noteworthy characteristics and limitations:
Individual collections are not indexed internally. This means that even to access a single element of a collection, the whole collection has to be read (and reading one is not paged internally).
While insertion operations on sets and maps never incur a read-before-write internally, some operations on lists do. Further, some list operations are not idempotent by nature (see the section on lists below for details), making their retry in case of timeout problematic. It is thus advised to prefer sets over lists when possible.
Non-frozen collections impose a significant performance penalty. To ensure better performance, use frozen collections or frozen UDTs. See this blog post for more information about improving performance.
Please note that while some of those limitations may or may not be removed/improved upon in the future, it is an anti-pattern to use a (single) collection to store large amounts of data.
A map
is a (sorted) set of key-value pairs, where keys are unique, and the map is sorted by its keys. You can define a map column with:
CREATE TABLE users (
id text PRIMARY KEY,
name text,
favs map<text, text> // A map of text keys, and text values
);
A map column can be assigned new contents with either INSERT
or UPDATE
,
as in the following examples. In both cases, the new contents replace the map’s
old content, if any:
INSERT INTO users (id, name, favs)
VALUES ('jsmith', 'John Smith', { 'fruit' : 'Apple', 'band' : 'Beatles' });
UPDATE users SET favs = { 'fruit' : 'Banana' } WHERE id = 'jsmith';
Note that Scylla does not distinguish an empty map from a missing value,
thus assigning an empty map ({}
) to a map is the same as deleting it.
Further, maps support:
Updating or inserting one or more elements:
UPDATE users SET favs['author'] = 'Ed Poe' WHERE id = 'jsmith';
UPDATE users SET favs = favs + { 'movie' : 'Cassablanca', 'band' : 'ZZ Top' } WHERE id = 'jsmith';
Removing one or more element (if an element doesn’t exist, removing it is a no-op but no error is thrown):
DELETE favs['author'] FROM users WHERE id = 'jsmith';
UPDATE users SET favs = favs - { 'movie', 'band'} WHERE id = 'jsmith';
Note that for removing multiple elements in a map
, you remove from it a set
of keys.
Lastly, TTLs are allowed for both INSERT
and UPDATE
, but in both cases, the TTL set only applies to the newly
inserted/updated elements. In other words:
UPDATE users USING TTL 10 SET favs['color'] = 'green' WHERE id = 'jsmith';
will only apply the TTL to the { 'color' : 'green' }
record, the rest of the map remaining unaffected.
A set
is a (sorted) collection of unique values. You can define a set column with:
CREATE TABLE images (
name text PRIMARY KEY,
owner text,
tags set<text> // A set of text values
);
A set column can be assigned new contents with either INSERT
or UPDATE
,
as in the following examples. In both cases, the new contents replace the set’s
old content, if any:
INSERT INTO images (name, owner, tags)
VALUES ('cat.jpg', 'jsmith', { 'pet', 'cute' });
UPDATE images SET tags = { 'kitten', 'cat', 'lol' } WHERE name = 'cat.jpg';
Note that Scylla does not distinguish an empty set from a missing value,
thus assigning an empty set ({}
) to a set is the same as deleting it.
Further, sets support:
Adding one or multiple elements (as this is a set, inserting an already existing element is a no-op):
UPDATE images SET tags = tags + { 'gray', 'cuddly' } WHERE name = 'cat.jpg';
Removing one or multiple elements (if an element doesn’t exist, removing it is a no-op but no error is thrown):
UPDATE images SET tags = tags - { 'cat' } WHERE name = 'cat.jpg';
Lastly, as for maps, TTLs, if used, only apply to the newly inserted values.
Note
As mentioned above and further discussed at the end of this section, lists have limitations and specific performance considerations that you should take into account before using them. In general, if you can use a set instead of a list, always prefer a set.
A list
is an ordered list of values (not necessarily unique). You can define a list column with:
CREATE TABLE plays (
id text PRIMARY KEY,
game text,
players int,
scores list<int> // A list of integers
);
A list column can be assigned new contents with either INSERT
or UPDATE
,
as in the following examples. In both cases, the new contents replace the list’s
old content, if any:
INSERT INTO plays (id, game, players, scores)
VALUES ('123-afde', 'quake', 3, [17, 4, 2]);
UPDATE plays SET scores = [ 3, 9, 4] WHERE id = '123-afde';
Note that Scylla does not distinguish an empty list from a missing value,
thus assigning an empty list ([]
) to a list is the same as deleting it.
Further, lists support:
Appending and prepending values to a list:
UPDATE plays SET players = 5, scores = scores + [ 14, 21 ] WHERE id = '123-afde';
UPDATE plays SET players = 6, scores = [ 3 ] + scores WHERE id = '123-afde';
Setting the value at a particular position in the list. This implies that the list has a pre-existing element for that position or an error will be thrown that the list is too small:
UPDATE plays SET scores[1] = 7 WHERE id = '123-afde';
Removing an element by its position in the list. This implies that the list has a pre-existing element for that position, or an error will be thrown that the list is too small. Further, as the operation removes an element from the list, the list size will be diminished by 1, shifting the position of all the elements following the one deleted:
DELETE scores[1] FROM plays WHERE id = '123-afde';
Deleting all the occurrences of particular values in the list (if a particular element doesn’t occur at all in the list, it is simply ignored, and no error is thrown):
UPDATE plays SET scores = scores - [ 12, 21 ] WHERE id = '123-afde';
Warning
The append and prepend operations are not idempotent by nature. So, in particular, if one of these operation timeouts, then retrying the operation is not safe, and it may (or may not) lead to appending/prepending the value twice.
Warning
Setting and removing an element by position and removing occurrences of particular values incur an internal read-before-write. They will thus run more slowly and take more resources than usual updates (with the exclusion of conditional write that have their own cost).
Lastly, as for maps, TTLs, when used, only apply to the newly inserted values.
CQL support the definition of user-defined types (UDT for short). Such a type can be created, modified and removed using
the create_type_statement
, alter_type_statement
and drop_type_statement
described below. But
once created, a UDT is simply referred to by its name:
user_defined_type: `udt_name`
udt_name: [ `keyspace_name` '.' ] `identifier`
Creating a new user-defined type is done using a CREATE TYPE
statement defined by:
create_type_statement: CREATE TYPE [ IF NOT EXISTS ] `udt_name`
: '(' `field_definition` ( ',' `field_definition` )* ')'
field_definition: `identifier` `cql_type`
A UDT has a name (udt_name
), which is used to declare columns of that type and is a set of named and typed fields. The udt_name
can be any
type, including collections or other UDTs. UDTs and collections inside collections must always be frozen (no matter which version of Scylla you are using).
For example:
CREATE TYPE full_name (
first text,
last text
);
CREATE TYPE phone (
country_code int,
number text,
);
CREATE TYPE address (
street text,
city text,
zip text,
phones map<text, frozen<phone>>
);
CREATE TABLE superheroes (
name frozen<full_name> PRIMARY KEY,
home frozen<address>
);
Note
Attempting to create an already existing type will result in an error unless the IF NOT EXISTS
option is used. If it is used, the statement will be a no-op if the type already exists.
A type is intrinsically bound to the keyspace in which it is created and can only be used in that keyspace. At creation, if the type name is prefixed by a keyspace name, it is created in that keyspace. Otherwise, it is created in the current keyspace.
As of Scylla Open Source 3.2, UDTs not inside collections do not have to be frozen, but in all versions prior to Scylla Open Souce 3.2, and in all Scylla Enterprise versions, UDTs must be frozen.
A non-frozen UDT example with Scylla Open Source 3.2 and higher:
CREATE TYPE ut (a int, b int);
CREATE TABLE cf (a int primary key, b ut);
Same UDT in versions prior:
CREATE TYPE ut (a int, b int);
CREATE TABLE cf (a int primary key, b frozen<ut>);
Once a user-defined type has been created, value can be input using a UDT literal:
udt_literal: '{' `identifier` ':' `term` ( ',' `identifier` ':' `term` )* '}'
In other words, a UDT literal is like a map literal but its keys are the names of the fields of the type. For instance, one could insert into the table defined in the previous section using:
INSERT INTO superheroes (name, home)
VALUES ({first: 'Buffy', last: 'Summers'},
{street: '1630 Revello Drive',
city: 'Sunnydale',
phones: { 'land-line' : { country_code: 1, number: '1234567890'},
'fax' : { country_code: 1, number: '10000000'}}
}
);
INSERT INTO superheroes (name, home)
VALUES ({first: 'Al', last: 'Bundy'},
{street: '9764 Jeopardy Lane',
city: 'Chicago'});
To be valid, a UDT literal should only include fields defined by the type it is a literal of, but it can omit some fields
(in which case those will be null
).
You can use UDT in a WHERE clause of a SELECT statement as follow:
SELECT * from superheroes WHERE name={first: 'Al', last: 'Bundy'};
result:
name | home
------------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------
{first: 'Al', last: 'Bundy'} | {street: '9764 Jeopardy Lane', city: 'Chicago', zip: null, phones: null}
Note that if you provide a subset of the UDT, for example, just the first
name in the example below, null will be used for the missing values.
For example:
SELECT * from superheroes WHERE name={first: 'Al'};
result:
name | home
------+------
(0 rows)
An existing user-defined type can be modified using an ALTER TYPE
statement:
alter_type_statement: ALTER TYPE `udt_name` `alter_type_modification`
alter_type_modification: ADD `field_definition`
: | RENAME `identifier` TO `identifier` ( `identifier` TO `identifier` )*
You can:
Add a new field to the type (ALTER TYPE address ADD country text
). That new field will be null
for any values
of the type created before the addition.
Rename the fields of the type (ALTER TYPE address RENAME zip TO zipcode
).
You can drop an existing user-defined type using a DROP TYPE
statement:
drop_type_statement: DROP TYPE [ IF EXISTS ] `udt_name`
Dropping a type results in the immediate, irreversible removal of that type. However, attempting to drop a type that is still in use by another type, table or function will result in an error.
If the type dropped does not exist, an error will be returned unless IF EXISTS
is used, in which case the operation
is a no-op.
CQL also supports tuples and tuple types (where the elements can be of different types). Functionally, tuples can be thought as anonymous UDTs with anonymous fields. Tuple types and tuple literals are defined by:
tuple_type: TUPLE '<' `cql_type` ( ',' `cql_type` )* '>'
tuple_literal: '(' `term` ( ',' `term` )* ')'
and can be used thusly:
CREATE TABLE durations (
event text,
duration tuple<int, text>,
)
INSERT INTO durations (event, duration) VALUES ('ev1', (3, 'hours'));
Unlike other “composed” types (collections and UDT), a tuple is always frozen<tuple>
(without the need of the
frozen keyword), and it is not possible to update only some elements of a tuple (without updating the whole tuple).
Also, a tuple literal should always provide values for all the components of the tuple type (some of
those values can be null, but they need to be explicitly declared as so).
Apache Cassandra Query Language
Copyright
© 2016, The Apache Software Foundation.
Apache®, Apache Cassandra®, Cassandra®, the Apache feather logo and the Apache Cassandra® Eye logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. No endorsement by The Apache Software Foundation is implied by the use of these marks.
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