Configuring compression

Steps for configuring compression.

You configure a table property and subproperties to manage compression. The CQL table properties documentation describes the types of compression options that are available. Compression is enabled by default.

Procedure

Disable compression, using CQL to set the compression parameters to an empty string.

CREATE TABLE DogTypes (
              block_id uuid,
              species text,
              alias text,
              population varint,
              PRIMARY KEY (block_id)
            )
            WITH compression = { 'sstable_compression' : '' };

Enable compression on an existing table, using ALTER TABLE to set the compression algorithm sstable_compression to LZ4Compressor (Cassandra 1.2.2 and later), SnappyCompressor, or DeflateCompressor.

CREATE TABLE DogTypes (
              block_id uuid,
              species text,
              alias text,
              population varint,
              PRIMARY KEY (block_id)
            )
            WITH compression = { 'sstable_compression' : 'LZ4Compressor' };

Change compression on an existing table, using ALTER TABLE and setting the compression algorithm sstable_compression to DeflateCompressor.
```
ALTER TABLE CatTypes
  WITH compression = { 'sstable_compression' : 'DeflateCompressor', 'chunk_length_kb' : 64 }
```
You tune data compression on a per-table basis using CQL to alter a table.