Cassandra CQL searching for element in list - cassandra

I have a table that has a column of list type (tags):
CREATE TABLE "Videos" (
video_id UUID,
title VARCHAR,
tags LIST<VARCHAR>,
PRIMARY KEY (video_id, upload_timestamp)
) WITH CLUSTERING ORDER BY (upload_timestamp DESC);
I have plenty of rows containing various values in the tags column, ie. ["outdoor","funny cats","funny mice"].
I want to perform a SELECT query that will return all rows that contain "funny cats" in the tags column. How can I do that?

To directly answer your question, yes there is a way to accomplish this. As of Cassandra 2.1 you can create a secondary index on a collection. First, I'll re-create your column family definition (while adding a definition for upload_timestamp timeuuid) and put some values in it.
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> SELECT * FROM videos ;
video_id | upload_timestamp | tags | title
--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+---------------------------
2977b806-df76-4dd7-a57e-11d361e72ce1 | fc011080-64f9-11e4-a819-21b264d4c94d | ['sci-fi', 'action', 'adventure'] | Star Wars
ab696e1f-78c0-45e6-893f-430e88db7f46 | 8db7c4b0-64fa-11e4-a819-21b264d4c94d | ['documentary'] | The Witches of Whitewater
15e6bc0d-6195-4d8b-ad25-771966c780c8 | 1680d120-64fa-11e4-a819-21b264d4c94d | ['dark comedy', 'action', 'language warning'] | Pulp Fiction
(3 rows)
Next, I'll create a secondary index on the tags column:
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> CREATE INDEX ON videos (tags);
Now, if I want to query the videos that contain the tag "action," I can accomplish this with the CONTAINS keyword:
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> SELECT * FROM videos WHERE tags CONTAINS 'action';
video_id | upload_timestamp | tags | title
--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+--------------
2977b806-df76-4dd7-a57e-11d361e72ce1 | fc011080-64f9-11e4-a819-21b264d4c94d | ['sci-fi', 'action', 'adventure'] | Star Wars
15e6bc0d-6195-4d8b-ad25-771966c780c8 | 1680d120-64fa-11e4-a819-21b264d4c94d | ['dark comedy', 'action', 'language warning'] | Pulp Fiction
(2 rows)
With this all being said, I should pass along a couple of warnings:
Secondary indexes do not perform well at scale. They exist to provide convenience, not performance. If you are expecting to have to query by tag often, then the right way to solve this would be to create a videosbytag query table, with the same data but keyed like this: PRIMARY KEY (tag,video_id)
You don't need the double-quotes in your table name. In fact, having it in quotes may cause you problems (ok, maybe minor irritations) down the road.

Related

Usage of cqlsh is similar with mysql, what's the difference?

cqlsh create table:
CREATE TABLE emp(
emp_id int PRIMARY KEY,
emp_name text,
emp_city text,
emp_sal varint,
emp_phone varint
);
insert data
INSERT INTO emp (emp_id, emp_name, emp_city,
emp_phone, emp_sal) VALUES(1,'ram', 'Hyderabad', 9848022338, 50000);
select data
SELECT * FROM emp;
emp_id | emp_city | emp_name | emp_phone | emp_sal
--------+-----------+----------+------------+---------
1 | Hyderabad | ram | 9848022338 | 50000
2 | Hyderabad | robin | 9848022339 | 40000
3 | Chennai | rahman | 9848022330 | 45000
looks just same as mysql, where is column family, column?
A column family is a container for an ordered collection of rows. Each row, in turn, is an ordered collection of columns.
A column is the basic data structure of Cassandra with three values, namely key or column name, value, and a time stamp.
so table emp is a column family?
INSERT INTO emp (emp_id, emp_name, emp_city, emp_phone, emp_sal) VALUES(1,'ram', 'Hyderabad', 9848022338, 50000); is a row which contains columns?
column here is something like emp_id=>1 or emp_name=>ram ??
In Cassandra, although the column families are defined, the columns are not. You can freely add any column to any column family at any time.
what does this mean?
I can have something like this?
emp_id | emp_city | emp_name | emp_phone | emp_sal
--------+-----------+----------+------------+---------
1 | Hyderabad | ram | 9848022338 | 50000
2 | Hyderabad | robin | 9848022339 | 40000 | asdfasd | asdfasdf
3 | Chennai | rahman | 9848022330 | 45000
A super column is a special column, therefore, it is also a key-value pair. But a super column stores a map of sub-columns.
Where is super column, how to create it?
Column family is an old name, now it's called just table.
About super column, also an old term, you have "Map" data type for example, or user defined data types for more complex structures.
About freely adding columns - in the old days, Cassandra was working with unstructured data paradigm, so you didn't had to define columns before you insert them, for now it isn't possible, since Cassandra team moved to be "structured" only (as many in the DB's industry came to conclusion that unstructured data makes more problems than effort).
Anyway, Cassandra's data representation on storage level is very different from MySQL, and indeed saves only data for the columns that aren't empty. It may look same row when you are running select from cqlsh, but it is stored and queried in very different way.
The name column family is an old term for what's now simply called a table, such as "emp" in your example. Each table contains one or many columns, such as "emp_id", "emp_name".
When saying something like being able to freely add columns any time, this would mean that you're always able to omit values for columns (will be null) or add columns using the ALTER TABLE statement.

Duplicate rows/columns for the same primary key in Cassandra

I have a table/columnfamily in Cassandra 3.7 with sensordata.
CREATE TABLE test.sensor_data (
house_id int,
sensor_id int,
time_bucket int,
sensor_time timestamp,
sensor_reading map<int, float>,
PRIMARY KEY ((house_id, sensor_id, time_bucket), sensor_time)
)
Now when I select from this table I find duplicates for the same primary key, something I thought was impossible.
cqlsh:test> select * from sensor_data;
house_id | sensor_id | time_bucket | sensor_time | sensor_reading
----------+-----------+-------------+---------------------------------+----------------
1 | 2 | 3 | 2016-01-02 03:04:05.000000+0000 | {1: 101}
1 | 2 | 3 | 2016-01-02 03:04:05.000000+0000 | {1: 101}
I think part of the problem is that this data has both been written "live" using java and Datastax java driver, and it has been loaded together with historic data from another source using sstableloader.
Regardless, this shouldn't be possible.
I have no way of connecting with the legacy cassandra-cli to this cluster, perhaps that would have told me something that I can't see using cqlsh.
So, the questions are:
* Is there anyway this could happen under known circumstances?
* Can I read more raw data using cqlsh? Specifically write time of these two rows. the writetime()-function can't operate on primary keys or collections, and that is all I have.
Thanks.
Update:
This is what I've tried, from comments, answers and other sources
* selecting using blobAsBigInt gives the same big integer for all identical rows
* connecting using cassandra-cli, after enabling thrift, is possible but reading the table isn't. It's not supported after 3.x
* dumping out using sstabledump is ongoing but expected to take another week or two ;)
I don't expect to see nanoseconds in a timestamp field and additionally i'm of the impression they're fully not supported? Try this:
SELECT house_id, sensor_id, time_bucket, blobAsBigint(sensor_time) FROM test.sensor_data;
I WAS able to replicate it doing by inserting the rows via an integer:
INSERT INTO sensor_data(house_id, sensor_id, time_bucket, sensor_time) VALUES (1,2,4,1451692800000);
INSERT INTO sensor_data(house_id, sensor_id, time_bucket, sensor_time) VALUES (1,2,4,1451692800001);
This makes sense because I would suspect one of your drivers is using a bigint to insert the timestamp, and one is likely actually using the datetime.
Tried playing with both timezones and bigints to reproduce this... seems like only bigint is reproducable
house_id | sensor_id | time_bucket | sensor_time | sensor_reading
----------+-----------+-------------+--------------------------+----------------
1 | 2 | 3 | 2016-01-02 00:00:00+0000 | null
1 | 2 | 4 | 2016-01-01 23:00:00+0000 | null
1 | 2 | 4 | 2016-01-02 00:00:00+0000 | null
1 | 2 | 4 | 2016-01-02 00:00:00+0000 | null
1 | 2 | 4 | 2016-01-02 01:01:00+0000 | null
edit: Tried some shenanigans using bigint in place of datetime insert, managed to reproduce...
Adding some observations on top of what Nick mentioned,
Cassandra Primary key = one or combination of {Partition key(s) + Clustering key(s)}
Keeping in mind the concepts of partition keys used within angular brackets which can be simple (one key) or composite (multiple keys) for unique identification and clustering keys to sort data, the below have been observed.
Query using select: sufficient to query using all the partition key(s) provided, additionally can query using clustering key(s) but in the same order in which they have been mentioned in primary key during table creation.
Update using set or update: the update statement needs to have search/condition clauses which not only include all the partition key(s) but also all the clustering key(s)
Answering the question - Is there anyway this could happen under known circumstances?
Yes, it is possible when same data is inserted from different sources.
To explain further, incase one tries to insert data from code (API etc) into Cassandra and then tries inserting the same data from DataStax Studio/any tool used to perform direct querying, a duplicate record is inserted.
Incase the same data is being pushed multiple times either from code alone or querying tool alone or from another source used to do the same operation multiple times, the data behaves idempotently and is not inserted again.
The possible explanation could be the way the underlying storage engine computes internal indexes or hashes to identify a row pertaining to set of columns (since column based).
Note:
The above information of duplicacy incase same data is pushed from different sources has been observed, tested and validated.
Language used: C#
Framework: .NET Core 3
"sensor_time" is part of the primary key. It is not in "Partition Key", but is "Clustering Column". this is why you get two "rows".
However, in the disk table, both "visual rows" are stored on single Cassandra row. In reality, they are just different columns and CQL just pretend they are two "visual rows".
Clarification - I did not worked with Cassandra for a while so I might not use correct terms. When i say "visual rows", I mean what CQL result shows.
Update
You can create following experiment (please ignore and fix any syntax errors I will do).
This suppose to do table with composite primary key:
"state" is "Partition Key" and
"city" is "Clustering Column".
create table cities(
state int,
city int,
name text,
primary key((state), city)
);
insert into cities(state, city, name)values(1, 1, 'New York');
insert into cities(state, city, name)values(1, 2, 'Corona');
select * from cities where state = 1;
this will return something like:
1, 1, New York
1, 2, Corona
But on the disk this will be stored on single row like this:
+-------+-----------------+-----------------+
| state | city = 1 | city = 2 |
| +-----------------+-----------------+
| | city | name | city | name |
+-------+------+----------+------+----------+
| 1 | 1 | New York | 2 | Corona |
+-------+------+----------+------+----------+
When you have such composite primary key you can select or delete on it, e.g.
select * from cities where state = 1;
delete from cities where state = 1;
In the question, primary key is defined as:
PRIMARY KEY ((house_id, sensor_id, time_bucket), sensor_time)
this means
"house_id", "sensor_id", "time_bucket" is "Partition Key" and
"sensor_time" is the "Clustering Column".
So when you select, the real row is spitted and show as if there are several rows.
Update
http://www.planetcassandra.org/blog/primary-keys-in-cql/
The PRIMARY KEY definition is made up of two parts: the Partition Key
and the Clustering Columns. The first part maps to the storage engine
row key, while the second is used to group columns in a row. In the
storage engine the columns are grouped by prefixing their name with
the value of the clustering columns. This is a standard design pattern
when using the Thrift API. But now CQL takes care of transposing the
clustering column values to and from the non key fields in the table.
Then read the explanations in "The Composite Enchilada".

Cassandra compound clustering key and queries with ordering

We use cassandra wide rows heavily to store per user time-series as they are perfect for that use-case. Let's assume we have a table:
create table user_events (
user_id text,
timestmp timestamp,
event text,
primary key((user_id), timestmp));
What if clashes on timestamp may happen (same user can emit two different events with the same timestamp). What is the best way to tweak this schema to resolve that assuming we have an ordering for all events present (have a sequence int for each event).
If I modify schema the following way:
create table user_events (
user_id text,
timestmp timestamp,
seq int,
event text,
primary key((user_id), timestmp, seq));
I won’t be able to do WHERE user_id = ? ORDER BY timestmp ASC, seq ASC – cassandra does not allow that.
I won’t be able to do WHERE user_id = ? ORDER BY timestmp ASC, seq ASC – cassandra does not allow that.
You might be seeing an error because you are repeating ASC. This should work:
WHERE user_id = ? ORDER BY timestmp,seq ASC
Also, as long as you have defined your primary key as PRIMARY KEY((user_id),timestmp,seq)) you don't even need to specify ORDER BY x[,y] ASC. It will cluster the data on disk in that order, and thus return it to you already sorted in that order. ORDER BY should only be necessary when you want to put your results in descending order (or whatever the opposite of how you have it defined is).
What if clashes on timestamp may happen?
I think your extra seq column should be sufficient, depending on how you plan on inserting the data. If you are setting the timestmp from the client, then you should be ok. However, look what happens when I (using your second table) INSERT rows while creating the timestamp two different ways.
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('Mal',dateof(now()),1,'commanding');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('Wash',dateof(now()),1,'piloting');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('River',dateof(now()),1,'freaking out');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('River',dateof(now()),3,'being weird');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('River',dateof(now()),2,'killing reavers');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('River','2015-01-13 13:14-0600',1,'freaking out');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('River','2015-01-13 13:14-0600',3,'being weird');
INSERT INTO user_events(user_id,timestmp,seq,event) VALUES ('River','2015-01-13 13:14-0600',2,'killing reavers');
Querying that data by a user_id of "River" yields:
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> SELECT * FROM user_events WHERE user_id='River';
user_id | timestmp | seq | event
---------+--------------------------+-----+-----------------
River | 2015-01-13 13:14:00-0600 | 1 | freaking out
River | 2015-01-13 13:14:00-0600 | 2 | killing reavers
River | 2015-01-13 13:14:00-0600 | 3 | being weird
River | 2015-01-14 12:58:41-0600 | 1 | freaking out
River | 2015-01-14 12:58:57-0600 | 3 | being weird
River | 2015-01-14 12:58:57-0600 | 2 | killing reavers
(6 rows)
Notice that using the now() function to generate a timeuuid, and then converting that to a timestamp with dateof() causes the two rows with the timestmp "2015-01-14 12:58:57-0600" to appear to be the same. But they are not the same, as you can tell by the seq column.
So just a bit of caution on using/generating timestamps. They might look the same, but they may not be stored as the same value. Just to be on the safe side, I would use a timeuuid instead.

Cassandra UPDATE primary key value

I understand that this is not possible using an UPDATE.
What I would like to do instead, is migrate all rows with say PK=0 to new rows where PK=1. Are there any simple ways of achieving this?
For a relatively simple way, you could always do a quick COPY TO/FROM in cqlsh.
Let's say that I have a column family (table) called "emp" for employees.
CREATE TABLE stackoverflow.emp (
id int PRIMARY KEY,
fname text,
lname text,
role text
)
And for the purposes of this example, I have one row in it.
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> SELECT * FROM emp;
id | fname | lname | role
----+-------+-------+-------------
1 | Angel | Pay | IT Engineer
If I want to re-create Angel with a new id, I can COPY the table's contents TO a .csv file:
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> COPY stackoverflow.emp TO '/home/aploetz/emp.csv';
1 rows exported in 0.036 seconds.
Now, I'll use my favorite editor to change the id of Angel to 2 in emp.csv. Note, that if you have multiple rows in your file (that don't need to be updated) this is your opportunity to remove them:
2,Angel,Pay,IT Engineer
I'll save the file, and then COPY the updated row back into Cassandra FROM the file:
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> COPY stackoverflow.emp FROM '/home/aploetz/emp.csv';
1 rows imported in 0.038 seconds.
Now Angel has two rows in the "emp" table.
aploetz#cqlsh:stackoverflow> SELECT * FROM emp;
id | fname | lname | role
----+-------+-------+-------------
1 | Angel | Pay | IT Engineer
2 | Angel | Pay | IT Engineer
(2 rows)
For more information, check the DataStax doc on COPY.

Cassandra: can you add dynamic columns within existing column clustering?

I'm using Cassandra 1.2.12 with CQL 3, and am having trouble modeling my column family.
I currently store snapshots of customer data at particular times. Works great:
CREATE TABLE data (
cust_id varchar,
time timeuuid,
data_text text,
PRIMARY KEY (cust_id, time)
);
The cust_id is the partition key and time is the clustering id, so, as I understand it, I can think of each row in the table like:
| cust_id | timeuuid1 : data_text | timeuuid2 : data_text |
| CUST1 | data at this time | data at this time |
Now I'd like to store another group of metrics for each snapshot - but the name of each of these columns isn't fixed. So something like:
| cust_id | timeuuid1 : data_text | timeuuid1 : dynamicCol1 | timeuuid1 : dynamicCol2 | timeuuid1 : dynamicColN |
| CUST1 | data |{some value} |{some value} |{some value} |
I've achieved dynamic columns for timestamp by using a composite primary key, but I can't see how to achieve this within each cluster of columns, if you see what I mean.
If I add, say, "dynamicColumnName" to the existing composite key, I'll end up with customer data stored for each dynamic column, which is not what I want.
Is this possible, without using a Map column? Hope you can help, thanks!
I am not a CQL user... With the thrift API you dynamically add a column to a column family by inserting/updating a record with a value for a column with name X. The column X will start to exist right there and then for that record.
Have you tried an INSERT statement specifying a column that you have not explicitly defined? I would expect that to have the same effect (column is created).

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