Using a CQL query

Using CQL to query a legacy table.

Using CQL, you can query a legacy table. A legacy table managed in CQL includes an implicit WITH COMPACT STORAGE directive. When you use CQL to query legacy tables with no column names defined for data within a partition, Apache Cassandra™ generates the names (column1 and value1) for the data. Using the RENAME clause, you can change the default column name to a more meaningful name.

ALTER TABLE users RENAME userid to user_id;

CQL supports dynamic tables created in the Thrift API, CLI, and earlier CQL versions. For example, a dynamic table is represented and queried like this:

CREATE TABLE clicks (
  userid uuid,
  url text,
  timestamp date
  PRIMARY KEY  (userid, url ) ) WITH COMPACT STORAGE;

SELECT url, timestamp
  FROM clicks
  WHERE  userid = 148e9150-1dd2-11b2-0000-242d50cf1fff;

SELECT timestamp
  FROM clicks
  WHERE  userid = 148e9150-1dd2-11b2-0000-242d50cf1fff
  AND  url = 'http://google.com';

In these queries, only equality conditions are valid.