CQL Language Reference¶

CQL Identifiers and Keywords¶

String literals and identifiers, such as keyspace and column family names, are case-sensitive. For example, identifier MyColumnFamily and mycolumnfamily are not equivalent. CQL keywords are case-insensitive. For example, the keywords SELECT and select are equivalent, although this document shows keywords in uppercase.

Valid expressions consist of these kinds of values:

• identifier: A letter followed by any sequence of letters, digits, or the underscore.
• string literal: Characters enclosed in single quotation marks. To use a single quotation mark itself in a string literal, escape it using a single quotation mark. For example, ''.
• integer: An optional minus sign, -, followed by one or more digits.
• uuid: 32 hex digits, 0-9 or a-f, which are case-insensitive, separated by dashes, -, after the 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th digits. For example: 01234567-0123-0123-0123-0123456789ab
• float: A series of one or more decimal digits, followed by a period, ., and one or more decimal digits. There is no provision for exponential, e, notation, no optional + sign, and the forms .42 and 42. are unacceptable. Use leading or trailing zeros before and after decimal points. For example, 0.42 and 42.0.
• whitespace: Separates terms and used inside string literals, but otherwise CQL ignores whitespace.

Working with Dates and Times¶

Values serialized with the timestamp type are encoded as 64-bit signed integers representing a number of milliseconds since the standard base time known as the epoch: January 1 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT.

Timestamp types can be input in CQL as simple long integers, giving the number of milliseconds since the epoch.

Timestamp types can also be input as string literals in any of the following ISO 8601 formats:

yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mmZ
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ssZ
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mm
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mmZ
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mm:ss
yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ
yyyy-mm-dd
yyyy-mm-ddZ

For example, for the date and time of Jan 2, 2003, at 04:05:00 AM, GMT:

2011-02-03 04:05+0000
2011-02-03 04:05:00+0000
2011-02-03T04:05+0000
2011-02-03T04:05:00+0000

The +0000 is the RFC 822 4-digit time zone specification for GMT. US Pacific Standard Time is -0800. The time zone may be omitted. For example:

2011-02-03 04:05
2011-02-03 04:05:00
2011-02-03T04:05
2011-02-03T04:05:00

If no time zone is specified, the time zone of the Cassandra coordinator node handing the write request is used. For accuracy, DataStax recommends specifying the time zone rather than relying on the time zone configured on the Cassandra nodes.

If you only want to capture date values, the time of day can also be omitted. For example:

2011-02-03
2011-02-03+0000

In this case, the time of day defaults to 00:00:00 in the specified or default time zone.

CQL Comments¶

Comments can be used to document CQL statements in your application code. Single line comments can begin with a double dash (--) or a double slash (//) and extend to the end of the line. Multi-line comments can be enclosed in /* and */ characters.

Specifying Consistency Level¶

In Cassandra, consistency refers to how up-to-date and synchronized a row of data is on all of its replica nodes. For any given read or write operation, the client request specifies a consistency level, which determines how many replica nodes must successfully respond to the request.

In CQL, the default consistency level is ONE. You can set the consistency level for any read (SELECT) or write (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, BATCH) operation. For example:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE state='TX' USING CONSISTENCY QUORUM;

Consistency level specifications are made up the keywords @USING CONSISTENCY@, followed by a consistency level identifier. Valid consistency level identifiers are:

• ANY (applicable to writes only)
• ONE (default)
• QUORUM
• LOCAL_QUORUM (applicable to multi-data center clusters only)
• EACH_QUORUM (applicable to multi-data center clusters only)
• ALL

See tunable consistency for more information about the different consistency levels.

CQL Keyspace Storage Parameters¶

CQL supports setting the following keyspace properties.

• strategy_class The name of the replication strategy: SimpleStrategy or NetworkTopologyStrategy
• strategy_options Replication strategy option names are appended to the strategy_options keyword using a colon (:). For example: strategy_options:DC1='1' or strategy_options:replication_factor='3'

CQL Column Family Storage Parameters¶

CQL supports setting the following column family properties, which in a few cases have slightly different names than their corresponding column family attributes.

compaction_strategy_class in CQL corresponds to the compaction_strategy attribute. default_validation in CQL corresponds to the default_validation_class attribute.