How is the schema applied?

[Carlos Alonso <in...@mrcalonso.com>]

Hi guys.

Just wondering how is the schema of a column family applied in write and
read paths.

As fas as I know the schema is something logical rather than physical. ie:
rows are saved on disk along with a header and the actual
keyspace/columfamily/column definition is saved in system tables.

I can think of the that header being a reference to the specific record of
that column in the system.schema_columns table and some programming logic
to match data types and fill missing fields before replying to the client.

Is that right?

Cheers!

Carlos Alonso | Software Engineer | @calonso <https://twitter.com/calonso>