MemSQL - why can't I do a cross-database insert into .. select - singlestore

I'm trying to do a simple insert with a field list from a table in one database to a table in another.
insert into db_a.target_table (field1,field2,field3) select field1,field2,field3 from db_b.source_table;
The error message seems straight-forward..
MemSQL does not support this type of query: Cross-database INSERT ... SELECT
Oddly enough, this example does work:
insert into db_a.target_table select * from db_b.source_table;
But this seems like such a common scenario. Has anyone run into a similar issue, and were you able to work around it?

Unfortunately, this isn't allowed because it is difficult to keep such queries transactional; multi-statement transactions are used internally to guarantee transactionality of the single insert-select (if one partition fails (dup key or something), we want to rollback everything!). Since we don't have cross-db multi-statement transactions (yet!), we don't have cross-db insert-select (yet!).
Stay tuned for nicer solutions.
However, if you REAAALY want to do this, here is what you do. However,
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. THIS IS NOT A SUPPORTED PROCEEDURE.
But it should work.
1) On db_b, create a table with the same columns as source_table, but make the shard key SHARD().
2) On db_a, run SHOW PARTITIONS.
3) For each of those partitions, create a connection to db_a_<ordinal> on the host and port listed in SHOW PARTITIONS. Run SHOW DATABASES on that connection and you'll see some databases called db_b_<another>. Pick one, doesn't matter which. Run INSERT INTO db_b<another>.source_table SELECT * from db_a_<ordinal>.source_table.
3.5) At this point, you haven't yet written to a table you care about, but now we will. Look at db_b.source_table. Is everything correct? Is all the data there? Run SHOW CREATE TABLE and double check the shard key is SHARD KEY () (it should be in comments). Everything look good? Ok, we can proceed.
4) After you're done doing this for EVERY partition, you can do INSERT INTO db_b.target_table (cols) SELECT cols from db_b.source_table, or whatever you want.
Good luck!

Related

Cassandra CQL: How to insert only records, which are not older than 3 years?

I have some table like this:
CREATE TABLE events (
id int,
eventdate timestamp,
PRIMARY KEY (id)
);
What I'm trying to do is conditional insert, which going to verify if eventdate is not older than 3 years and insert data if the condition is met.
In SQL something similar could be achieved by DATEADD
How to handle it in Cassandra?
select * from events and iterate (paging) through the result set. Issue an insert for everything older than 3 years. A quick python script and giving it a day or two to run will accomplish it in less time than more elaborate things. Particularly if this is a one off thing. If you need to do it regularly I would recommend writing a spark job to do it. You can get more efficient if you dont want to use spark and want to run it locally by splitting up token ranges on the select statement to be the ring boundaries.
Cassandra wont support large bulk operations that require reads before writes that must read entire data set. It wouldn't work on clusters its designed to support (think petabytes across many data centers).

Cassandra delete/update a row and get its previous value

How can I delete a row from Cassandra and get the value it had just before the deletion?
I could execute a SELECT and DELETE query in series, but how can I be sure that the data was not altered concurrently between the execution of those two queries?
I've tried to execute the SELECT and DELETE queries in a batch but that seems to be not allowed.
cqlsh:foo> BEGIN BATCH
... SELECT * FROM data_by_user WHERE user = 'foo';
... DELETE FROM data_by_user WHERE user = 'foo';
... APPLY BATCH;
SyntaxException: line 2:4 mismatched input 'SELECT' expecting K_APPLY (BEGIN BATCH [SELECT]...)
In my use case I have one main table that stores data for items. And I've build several tables that allow to lookup items based on those informations.
If I delete an item from the main table, I must also remove it from the other tables.
CREATE TABLE items (id text PRIMARY KEY, owner text, liking_users set<text>, ...);
CREATE TABLE owned_items_by_user (user text, item_id text, PRIMARY KEY ((user), item_id));
CREATE TABLE liked_items_by_user (user text, item_id tect, PRIMARY KEY ((user), item_id));
...
I'm afraid the tables might contain wrong data if I delete an item and at the same time someone e.g. hits the like button of that same item.
The deleteItem method execute a SELECT query to fetch the current row of the item from the main table
The likeItem method that gets executed at the same times runs an UPDATE query and inserts the item into the owned_items_by_user, liked_items_by_user, ... tables. This happens after the SELECT statement was executed and the UPDATE query is executed before the DELETE query.
The deleteItem method deletes the items from the owned_items_by_user, liked_items_by_user, ... tables based on the data just retrieved via the SELECT statement. This data does not yet contain the just added like. The item is therefore deleted, but the just added like remains in the liked_items_by_user table.
You can do a select beforehand, then do a lightweight transaction on the delete to ensure that the data still looks exactly like it did when you selected. If it does, you know the latest state before you deleted. If it does not, keep retrying the whole procedure until it sticks.
Unfortunately you cannot do a SELECT query inside a batch statement. If you read the docs here, only insert, update, and delete statements can be used.
What you're looking for is atomicity on the execution, but batch statements are not going to be the way forward. If the data has been altered, your worst case situation is zombies, or data that could reappear.
Cassandra uses a grade period mechanism to deal with this, you can find the details here. If for whatever reason, this is critical to your business logic, the "best" thing you can do in this situation is to increase the consistency level, or restructure the read pattern at application level to not rely on perfect atomicity, whichever the right trade off is for you. So either you give up some of the performance, or tune down the requirement.
In practice, QUORUM should be more than enough to satisfy most situations most of the time. Alternatively, you can do an ALL, and you pay the performance penalty, but that means all replicas for the given foo partition key will have to acknowledge the write both in the commitlog and the memtable. Note, this still means a flush from the commitlog will need to happen before the delete is complete, but you can tune the consistency to the level you require.
You don't have atomicity in the SQL sense, but depending on throughput it's unlikely that you will need it(touch wood).
TLDR:
USE CONSISTENCY ALL;
DELETE FROM data_by_user WHERE user = 'foo';
That should do the trick. The error you're seeing now is basically the ANTLR3 Grammar parser for CQL 3, which is not designed to accept to SELECT queries inside batches simply because they are not supported, you can see that here.

DSE Cassandra 3.x delete operation

I have a table with a PRIMARY KEY of ( (A,B), C)
Partition key (A,B)
Clustering key C
My question is related to deleting from this table.
Is it efficient to use the IN clause when deleting or to issue multiple
delete statements using the equality operation.
delete from table where A=xx and B IN ('a','b','c');
-OR-
delete from table where A=xx and B='a';
delete from table where A=xx and B='b';
delete from table where A=xx and B='c';
Is there any harm in using the IN operator as in the 1st delete statement.
There may be up to around 20 deletes in total (or 20 items in the IN clause).
Thanks in advance for all your help!
With a few small exceptions its almost always better to use the 2nd option multiple deletes issued asynchronously instead. The coordinator of the IN clause will be put on a lot of load while the later will evenly distribute the load. Also with a TokenAware load balancer the requests will go directly to the correct replicas and can complete pretty quickly. If you are doing hundreds or more of the deletes you might wanna use a Semaphore or something though to limit number of in flight deletes, just to prevent overloading cluster.
It depends on the needs of your application. If the delete operations are expected to be fast, then you'll probably want to run each one explicitly (second option).
On the other hand, if the delete runs as a part of a batch or cleanup job, and nobody really cares how long it takes, then you could probably get away with using IN. The trick there would be in keeping it from timing-out (and as Chris indicated, putting undue load on the node). It might make sense to break-down your groups of values for column B, to keep those small. While 20 list items with IN isn't the most I've heard of someone trying, it's definitely more than I would ever use personally (I'd try to keep it smaller than 10).
Essentially, using the IN operator with a DELETE is going to be susceptible to performance issues just like it would be on a SELECT, as described in this answer (included here for reference):
Is the IN relation in Cassandra bad for queries?

Cassandra - do not upsert

We have a requirement where we would like our application (which might be deployed on multiple hosts) to create a row in Cassandra. The only host which is successful in creating the row, execute the work. Would it be enough to write an insert statement like below so that if two server try to insert the row, only one succeeds, and the other one gets the exception/does not succeed?
INSERT INTO keyspace1.claim (claim_id, status) VALUES (1, false) IF NOT EXIST
Would like to understand using IF NOT EXIST will avoid the upsert.
Thanks,
Shilpa
Yes, IF NOT EXISTS will include a paxos round and read-before-write though so much much slower. Check the resultset of the insert with wasApplied() to tell if it took or not.
https://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/lightweight-transactions-in-cassandra-2-0

Cassandra hard vs soft delete

I have multiple tables that I want to keep their deleted data.
I thought of two options to achieve that:
Create new table called deleted_x and when deleting from x, immediatly insert to deleted_x.
Advantage : querying from only one table.
Disadvantages :
Do insert for each delete
When the original table structure changes, I will have to change the deleted table too.
Have a column called is_deleted and put it in the partition key in each of these tables and set it to true when deleting a row.
Advantage : One table structure
Disadvantage : mention is_deleted in all queries from table
Are there any performence considerations I should think of additionally?
Which way is the better way?
Option #1 is awkward, but it's probably the right way to do things in Cassandra. You could issue the two mutations (one DELETE, and one INSERT) in a single batch, and guarantee that both are written.
Option #2 isn't really as easy as you may expect if you're coming from a relational background, because adding an is_deleted column to a table in Cassandra and expecting to be able to query against it isn't trivial. The primary reason is that Cassandra performs significantly better when querying against the primary key (partition key(s) + optional clustering key(s) than secondary indexes. Therefore, for maximum performance, you'd need to model this as a clustering key - doing so then prohibits you from simply issuing an update - you'd need to delete + insert, anyway.
Option #2 becomes somewhat more viable in 3.0+ with Materialized Views - if you're looking at Cassandra 3.0+, it may be worth considering.
Are there any performence considerations I should think of additionally?
You will effectively double the write load and storage size for your cluster by inserting your data twice. This includes compactions, repairs, bootstrapping new nodes and backups.
Which way is the better way?
Let me suggest a 3rd option instead.
Create table all_data that contains each row and will never be deleted from
Create table active_data using the same partition key. This table will only contain non-deleted rows (Edit: but not any data at all, just the key!).
Check if key is in active_data before reading from all_data will allow you to only read non-deleted rows

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