Language change : from Thrift to CQL

The data model changes when using CQL (Cassandra Query Language). CQL is providing an abstraction of the low-level data stored in Cassandra, in opposition to Thrift that aims to expose the low-level data structure directly. But note that this changes with Cassandra 3’s new storage engine.

Thrift exposes Keyspaces, and these Keyspaces contain Column Families. A ColumnFamily contains Rows in which each Row has a list of an arbitrary number of column-values. With CQL, the data is tabular, ColumnFamily gets viewed as a Table, the Table Rows get a fixed and finite number of named columns. Thrift’s columns inside the Rows get distributed in a tabular way through the Table Rows. See the following figure:

Some of the columns of a CQL Table have a special role that is specifically related to the Cassandra architecture. Indeed, the Row key of the Thrift Row, becomes the Partition Key in the CQL Table, and can be composed of 1 or multiple CQL columns (the key column in Figure 1). The “Column” part of the Column-value component in a Thrift Row, becomes the Clustering Column in CQL, and can also be composed of multiple columns (in the figure, column1 is the only column composing the Clustering Column, but there can be others if the Thrift’s ColumnComparator is a CompositeType).

Here is the basic architectural concept of CQL, a detailed explanation and CQL examples can be found in this article : http://www.planetcassandra.org/making-the-change-from-thrift-to-cql/. Understanding the CQL abstraction plays a key role in developing performing and scaling applications.