[jira] [Assigned] (CASSANDRA-4179) Add more general support for composites (to row key, column value)

["Sylvain Lebresne (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-4179?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Sylvain Lebresne reassigned CASSANDRA-4179:
-------------------------------------------

    Assignee: Sylvain Lebresne
    
> Add more general support for composites (to row key, column value)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CASSANDRA-4179
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-4179
>             Project: Cassandra
>          Issue Type: Sub-task
>          Components: API
>            Reporter: Sylvain Lebresne
>            Assignee: Sylvain Lebresne
>            Priority: Minor
>
> Currently CQL3 have a nice syntax for using composites in the column name (it's more than that in fact, it creates a whole new abstraction but let's say I'm talking implementation here). There is however 2 other place where composites could be used (again implementation wise): the row key and the column value. This ticket proposes to explore which of those make sense for CQL3 and how.
> For the row key, I really think that CQL support makes sense. It's very common (and useful) to want to stuff composite information in a row key. Sharding a time serie (CASSANDRA-4176) is probably the best example but there is other.
> For the column value it is less clear. CQL3 makes it very transparent and convenient to store multiple related values into multiple columns so maybe composites in a column value is much less needed. I do still see two cases for which it could be handy:
> # to save some disk/memory space, if you do know it makes no sense to insert/read two value separatly.
> # if you want to enforce that two values should not be inserted separatly. I.e. to enforce a form of "constraint" to avoid programatic error.
> Those are not widely useful things, but my reasoning is that if whatever syntax we come up for "grouping" row key in a composite trivially extends to column values, why not support it.
> As for syntax I have 3 suggestions (that are just that, suggestions):
> # If we only care about allowing grouping for row keys:
> {noformat}
> CREATE TABLE timeline (
>     name text,
>     month int,
>     ts timestamp,
>     value text,
>     PRIMARY KEY ((name, month), ts)
> )
> {noformat}
> # A syntax that could work for both grouping in row key and colum value:
> {noformat}
> CREATE TABLE timeline (
>     name text,
>     month int,
>     ts timestamp,
>     value1 text,
>     value2 text,
>     GROUP (name, month) as key,
>     GROUP (value1, value2),
>     PRIMARY KEY (key, ts)
> )
> {noformat}
> # An alternative to the preceding one:
> {noformat}
> CREATE TABLE timeline (
>     name text,
>     month int,
>     ts timestamp,
>     value1 text,
>     value2 text,
>     GROUP (name, month) as key,
>     GROUP (value1, value2),
>     PRIMARY KEY (key, ts)
> ) WITH GROUP (name, month) AS key
>    AND GROUP (value1, value2)
> {noformat}

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