I have a Cassandra table that is created like:
CREATE TABLE table(
num int,
part_key int,
val1 int,
val2 float,
val3 text,
...,
PRIMARY KEY((part_key), num)
);
part_key is 1 for every record, because I want to execute range queries and only got one server (I know that's not a good use case). num is the record number from 1 to 1.000.000. I can already run queries like
SELECT num, val43 FROM table WHERE part_key=1 and num<5000;
Is it possible to do some more filtering in Cassandra, like:
... AND val45>463;
I think it's not possible like that, but can somebody explain why?
Right now I do this filtering in my code, but are there other possibilities?
I hope I did not miss a post that already explains this.
Thank you for your help!
Cassandra range queries are only possible on the last clustering column specified by the query. So, if your pk is (a,b,c,d), you can do
... where a=2, b=4, c>5
... where a=2, b>4
but not
... where a=2, c>5
This is because data is stored in partitions, index by partition key (the first key of the pk), and then sorted by each successive clustering key.
If you have exact values, you can add a secondary index to val 4 and then do
... and val4=34
but that's about it. And even then, you want to hit a partition before applying the index. Otherwise you'll get a cluster wide query that'll likely timeout.
The querying limitations are there due to the way cassandra stores data for fast insert and retrieval. All data in a partition is held together, so querying inside the partition client side is usually not a problem, unless you have very large wide rows (in which case, perhaps the schema should be reviewed).
Hope that helps.
Related
I have a table that stores events
CREATE TABLE active_events (
event_id VARCHAR,
number VARCHAR,
....
start_time TIMESTAMP,
PRIMARY KEY (event_id, number)
);
Now, I want to select an event with the highest start_time. It is possible? I've tried to create a secondary index, but no success.
This is a query I've created
select * from active_call order by start_time limit 1
But the error says ORDER BY is only supported when the partition key is restricted by an EQ or an IN.
Should I create some kind of materialized view? What should I do to execute my query?
This is an anti-pattern in Cassandra. To order the data you need to read all data and find the highest value. And this will require scanning of data on multiple nodes, and will be very long.
Materialized view also won't help much as order for data only exists inside an individual partition, so you will need to put all your data into a single partition that could be huge and data would be imbalanced.
I can only think of following workaround:
Have an additional table that will have all columns of the original table, but with a fake partition key and no clustering columns
You do inserts into that table in parallel to normal inserts, but use a fixed value for that fake partition key, and explicitly setting a timestamp for a record equal to start_time (don't forget to multiple by 1000 as timestamp uses microseconds). In this case it will guaranteed to be the value with the highest timestamp as Cassandra won't override it with other data with lower timestamp.
But this doesn't solve a problem with data skew, and all traffic will be handled by fixed number of nodes equal to RF.
Another alternative - use another database.
This type of query isn't valid in big data because it requires a full table scan and doesn't scale. It works in traditional relational databases because the dataset is smaller. Imagine you had billions of partitions each with thousands of rows spread across hundreds of nodes. A full table scan in a large cluster will take a very long time if it was allowed.
The error:
ORDER BY is only supported when the partition key is restricted by an EQ or an IN
gets returned because you can only sort the results provided (a) the query is restricted to a partition key, and (b) the rows are ordered by a clustering column. You cannot sort the results based on a column that is not part of the clustering key. Cheers!
We are running Apache Cassandra 2.1.X and using Datastax driver. I've a use case where we need keep a count of various things. I came up with schema something like this:
create table count{
partitionKey bigInt,
type text,
uniqueId uuid,
primary_key(partitionKey, type, uniqueId)
So this is nothing but wide rows. My question is if I do something like
select count(uniqueId) from count where paritionKey=987 and type='someType' and this returns back with say 150k count.
Will it be a expensive operation for Cassandra? Is there a better way to compute count like this. I also want to know if anyone has solved something like this before?
I would prefer to stay away from keeping counter as it's not that accurate and keeping count at application level is anyways doomed to fail.
Also it will great to know how does Cassandra internally compute such data.
A big thanks to folks who help the community!
Even if you specify partition key cassandra still needs to read 150k cell to give you the count
If you haven't specify the partition key cassandra needs to scan all the node's all row to give you the count.
Best Approach is to use counter table.
CREATE TABLE id_count (
partitionkey bigint,
type text,
count counter,
PRIMARY KEY ((partitionkey, type))
);
Whenever a uniqueId insert increment the count here.
Pretty new to Cassandra - I have data that looks like this:
<geohash text, category int, payload text>
The only query I want to run is:
SELECT category, payload FROM table WHERE geohash IN (list of 9 geohashes)
What would be the best schema in this case?
I know I could simply make my geohash the primary key and be done with it, but is there a better approach?
What are the benefits for defining PRIMARY KEY (geohash, category, payload)?
It depends on the size of your data for each row (geohash text, category int, payload text). If your payload size does not reach to tens of Mb, then you may want to put more geohash values into the same partition by using an artificial bucketId int, so your query can be performed on a server. Schema would look like this
geohash text, bucketId int, category int, payload text where the partition key is goehash and bucketId.
The recommendation is to have a sizeable partition <= 100 Mb, so you don't have to look up too many partitions. More is available here.
If you have a primary key on (geohash, category, payload), then you can have your data sorted on category and payload in the ascending order.
So based on the query, it sounds like you're considering a CQL schema that looks like this:
CREATE TABLE geohash_data (
geohash text,
category int,
data text,
PRIMARY KEY (geohash)
);
In Cassandra, the first (and in this case only) column in your PRIMARY KEY is the Partition Key. The Partition Key is what's used to distribute data around the cluster. So when you do your SELECT ... IN () query, you're basically querying for the data in 9 different partitions which, depending on how large your cluster is, the replication factor, and the consistency level you use to do the query, could end up querying at least 9 servers (and maybe more). Why does that matter?
Latency: The more partitions (and thus replicas/servers) involved in our query, the more potential for a slow server being able to negatively impact how quickly the data is returned.
Availability: The more partitions (and thus replicas/servers) involved in our query, the more potential that a single server going down could make it impossible for the query to be satisfied at all.
Both of those are bad scenarios so (as Toan rightly points out in his answer and the link he provided), we try to data model in Cassandra so that our queries will hit as few partitions (and thus replicas/servers) as possible. What does that mean for your scenario? Without knowing all the details, it's hard to say for sure, but let me make a couple guesses about your scenario and give you an example of how I'd try to solve it.
It sounds like maybe you already know the list of possible geohash values ahead of time (maybe they're at some regularly spaced interval of a predefined grid). It also sounds like maybe you're querying for 9 geohash values because you're doing some kind of "proximity" search where you're trying to get the data for the 9 geohashes in each direction around a given point.
If that's the case, the trick could be to denormalize the data at write time into a data model optimized for reading. For example, a schema like this:
CREATE TABLE geohash_data (
geohash text,
data_geohash text,
category int,
data text,
PRIMARY KEY (geohash, data_geohash)
);
When you INSERT a data point, you'd calculate the geohashes for the surrounding areas where you expect that data should show up in the results. You'd then INSERT the data multiple times for each geohash you calculated. So the value for geohash is the calculated value where you expect it to show up in the query results and the value for data_geohash is the actual value from the data you're inserting. Thus you'd have multiple (up to 9?) rows in your partition for a given geohash which represent the data of the surrounding geohashes.
This means your SELECT query now doesn't have to do an IN and hit multiple partitions. You just query WHERE geohash = ? for the point you want to search around.
I am new to NoSQL database and have just started using apache Cassandra. I created a simple table "emp" with primary key on "empno" column. This is a simple table as we always get in Oracle's default scott schema.
Now I loaded data using the COPY command and issued query Select * from emp order by empno but I was surprised that CQL did not allow Order by on empno column (which is PK). Also when I used Where condition, it did not allow any inequality operations on empno column (it said only EQ or IN conditions are allowed). It also did not allowed Where and Order by on any other column, as they were not used in PK, and did not have an index.
Can someone please help me what should I do if I want to keep empno unique in the table and want a query results in Sorted order of empno?
(My version is:
cqlsh:demodb> show version
[cqlsh 5.0.1 | Cassandra 2.2.0 | CQL spec 3.3.0 | Native protocol v4]
)
There are two parts to a PRIMARY KEY in Cassandra:
partition key(s)
clustering key(s)
PRIMARY KEY (partitionKey1,clusteringKey1,clusteringKey2)
or
PRIMARY KEY ((partitionKey1,partitionKey2),clusteringKey1,clusteringKey2)
The partition key determines which node(s) your data is stored on. The clustering key determines the order of the data within your partition key.
In CQL, the ORDER BY clause is really only used to reverse the defined sort direction of your clustering order. As for the columns themselves, you can only specify the columns defined (and in that exact order...no skipping) in your CLUSTERING ORDER BY clause at table creation time. So you cannot pick arbitrary columns to order your result set at query-time.
Cassandra achieves performance by using the clustering keys to sort your data on-disk, thereby only returning ordered rows in a single read (no random reads). This is why you must take a query-based modeling approach (often duplicating your data into multiple query tables) with Cassandra. Know your queries ahead of time, and build your tables to serve them.
Select * from emp order by empno;
First of all, you need a WHERE clause. It's ok to query without it, if you're working with a relational database. With Cassandra, you should do your best to avoid unbound SELECT queries. Besides, Cassandra can only enforce a sort order within a partition, so querying without a WHERE clause won't return data in the order you want, anyway.
Secondly, as I mentioned above, you need to define clustering keys. If you want to order your result set by empno, then you must find another column to define as your partition key. Try something like this:
CREATE TABLE emp_by_dept (
empno text,
dept text,
name text,
PRIMARY KEY (dept,empno)
) WITH CLUSTERING ORDER BY (empno ASC);
Now, I can query employees by department, and they will be returned to me ordered by empno:
SELECT * FROM emp_by_dept WHERE dept='IT';
But to be clear, you will not be able to query every row in your table, and have it ordered by a single column. The only way to get meaningful order into your result sets, is first partition your data in a way that makes sense to your business case. Running an unbound SELECT will return all of your rows (assuming that the query doesn't time-out while trying to query every node in your cluster), but result set ordering can only be enforced within a partition. So you have to restrict by partition key in order for that to make any sense.
My apologies for self-promoting, but last year I wrote an article for DataStax called We Shall Have Order!, in which I addressed how to solve these types of problems. Give it a read and see if it helps.
Edit for additional questions:
From your answer I concluded 2 things about Cassandra:
(1) There is no
way of getting a result set which is only order by a column that has
been defined as Unique.
(2) When we define a PK
(partition-key+clustering-key), then the results will always be order
by Clustering columns within any fixed partition key (we must restrict
to one partition-key value), that means there is no need of ORDER BY
clause, since it cannot ever change the order of rows (the order in
which rows are actually stored), i.e. Order By is useless.
1) All PRIMARY KEYs in Cassandra are unique. There's no way to order your result set by your partition key. In my example, I order by empno (after partitioning by dept). – Aaron 1 hour ago
2) Stopping short of saying that ORDER BY is useless, I'll say that its only real use is to switch your sort direction between ASC and DESC.
I created an index on "empno" column of "emp" table, it is still not
allowing ORDER BY empno. So, what Indexes are for? are they only for
searching records for specific value of index key?
You cannot order a result set by an indexed column. Secondary indexes are (not the same as their relational counterparts) really only useful for edge-case, analytics-based queries. They don't scale, so the general recommendation is not to use secondary indexes.
Ok, that simply means that one table cannot be used for getting
different result sets with different conditions and different sorting
order.
Correct.
Hence for each new requirement, we need to create a new table.
IT means if we have a billion rows in a table (say Sales table), and
we need sum of sales (1) Product-wise, (2) Region-wise, then we will
duplicate all those billion rows in 2 tables with one in clustering
order of Product, the other in clustering order of Region,. and even
if we need to sum sales per Salesman_id, then we build a 3rd table,
again putting all those billion rows? is it sensible?
It's really up to you to decide how sensible it is. But lack of query flexibility is a drawback of Cassandra. To get around it you can keep creating query tables (I.E., trading disk for performance). But if it gets to a point where it becomes ungainly or difficult to manage, then it's time to think about whether or not Cassandra is really the right solution.
EDIT 20160321
Hi Aaron, you said above "Stopping short of saying that ORDER BY is useless, I'll say that its only real use is to switch your sort direction between ASC and DESC."
But i found even that is not correct. Cassandra only allows ORDER by in the same direction as we define in the "CLUSTERING ORDER BY" caluse of CREATE TABLE. If in that clause we define ASC, it allows only order by ASC, and vice versa.
Without seeing an error message, it's hard to know what to tell you on that one. Although I have heard of queries with ORDER BY failing when you have too many rows stored in a partition.
ORDER BY also functions a little odd if you specify multiple columns to sort by. If I have two clustering columns defined, I can use ORDER BY on the first column indiscriminately. But as soon as I add the second column to the ORDER BY clause, my query only works if I specify both sort directions the same (as the CLUSTERING ORDER BY definition) or both different. If I mix and match, I get this:
InvalidRequest: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="Unsupported order by relation"
I think that has to do with how the data is stored on-disk. Otherwise Cassandra would have more work to do in preparing result sets. Whereas if it requires everything to either to match or mirror the direction(s) specified in the CLUSTERING ORDER BY, it can just relay a sequential read from disk. So it's probably best to only use a single column in your ORDER BY clause, for more predictable results.
Adding a redux answer as the accepted one is quite long.
Order by is currently only supported on the clustered columns of the PRIMARY KEY
and when the partition key is restricted by an Equality or an IN operator in where clause.
That is if you have your primary key defined like this :
PRIMARY KEY ((a,b),c,d)
Then you will be able to use the ORDER BY when & only when your query has :
a where clause with all the primary key restricted either by an equality operator (=) or an IN operator such as :
SELECT * FROM emp WHERE a = 1 AND b = 'India' ORDER BY c,d;
SELECT * FROM emp WHERE a = 1 AND b = 'India' ORDER BY c;
These two query are the only valid ones.
Also this query would not work :
SELECT * FROM emp WHERE a = 1 AND b = 'India' ORDER BY d,c;
because order by currently only support the ordering of columns following their declared order in the PRIMARY KEY that is in primary key definition c has been declared before d and the query violates the ordering by placing d first.
I have to create a table which stores a big amount of data (like 400 columns and 5.000.000 to 40.000.000 rows). There is a counter "counter" which counts from 1 upwards. Right now this is my primary key. The other variables are int, float, and varchar type and repeating.
I need to do this for a database-comparison, so I have to use Cassandra, even if there could be other databases, that can do better in this specific problem.
On this table I want to execute some range queries. The queries should be like:
SELECT counter, val1, val2, val3 FROM table WHERE counter > 1000 AND counter < 5000;
Also there will be other filter-parameters:
... AND val54 = 'OK';
I think this is a problem in Cassandra, because "counter" is the PK. I will try running the token() function, but I guess this will be slow.
Right now I am learning about the data modelling in Cassandra but I hope somebody with experience in Cassandra got some hints for me, like how to organize the table and make the queries possible and fast? Perhaps just some topics I should learn about or links that will help me.
Have a nice day,
Friedrich
This sounds like a bad use case for Cassandra.
First, range queries are discouraged in Cassandra. This is because the range can't be resolved with out visiting every node in the cluster.
Second, you can't mix a counter type column with other column types. For a given table it can either have (and only have) counter columns or it can have all non-counter columns.
As far as Cassandra data modeling goes, if you want to create a successful data model, create your partitions around the exact thing you're going to query.