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Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 01:05:56 -0500
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Subject: CQL/CLI Experiments w/ 1.2
From: "Brian O'Neill" <bone@alumni.brown.edu>
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
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I'm using the following schema and data:
CREATE TABLE children ( childId varchar, firstName varchar, lastName
varchar, timezone varchar, PRIMARY KEY (childId ) );
insert into children (childId, firstName, lastName, timezone) values
('bart.simpson', 'Bart', 'Simpson', 'PST');
insert into children (childId, firstName, lastName, timezone) values
('dennis.menace', 'Dennis', 'Menace', 'PST');

All is well on the CQL side of things, but when I go over into CLI, I
see the following:

[default@northpole] list children;
Using default limit of 100
Using default column limit of 100
-------------------
RowKey: bart.simpson
=> (column=, value=, timestamp=1355116106465000)
=> (column=firstname, value=42617274, timestamp=1355116106465000)
=> (column=lastname, value=53696d70736f6e, timestamp=1355116106465000)
=> (column=timezone, value=505354, timestamp=1355116106465000)
-------------------
RowKey: dennis.menace
=> (column=, value=, timestamp=1355116106466000)
=> (column=firstname, value=44656e6e6973, timestamp=1355116106466000)
=> (column=lastname, value=4d656e616365, timestamp=1355116106466000)
=> (column=timezone, value=505354, timestamp=1355116106466000)

Question 1:
What is the empty column/value?   I ask because it causes
confusion/issues when accessing it from a Java API. (like Astyanax)
That column and value are in the result set.  Should clients start
ignoring empty column names/values?

Question 2:
It also appears as though the column names are CompositeType even
though there is only one component:  (below is from CLI)
  Columns sorted by:
org.apache.cassandra.db.marshal.CompositeType(org.apache.cassandra.db.marshal.UTF8Type)

Because of that, I would need to use CompositeTypes in my java app to
insert into the table.
Is there any way to create a table via CQL3 that doesn't force me to
use Composite types in my Java app?
(In CQL2, we could specify comparators, but I don't see that in CQL3)

-brian

-- 
Brian ONeill
Lead Architect, Health Market Science (http://healthmarketscience.com)
mobile:215.588.6024
blog: http://brianoneill.blogspot.com/
twitter: @boneill42