Cassandra Connector#

The Cassandra connector allows querying data stored in Cassandra or in ScyllaDB.

Compatibility#

Connector is compatible with all Cassandra versions starting from 2.1.5. Latest ScyllaDB tested is 5.1.11.

Configuration#

To configure the Cassandra connector, create a catalog properties file etc/catalog/cassandra.properties with the following contents, replacing host1,host2 with a comma-separated list of the Cassandra nodes used to discovery the cluster topology:

connector.name=cassandra
cassandra.contact-points=host1,host2

You will also need to set cassandra.native-protocol-port if your Cassandra nodes are not using the default port (9042).

For ScyllaDB you don’t need to add any additional configuration. ScyllaDB uses the same port as Cassandra by default. Just point to ScyllaDB nodes in cassandra.contact-points config property.

Multiple Cassandra or ScyllaDB Clusters#

You can have as many catalogs as you need, so if you have additional Cassandra(ScyllaDB) clusters, simply add another properties file to etc/catalog with a different name (making sure it ends in .properties). For example, if you name the property file sales.properties, Presto will create a catalog named sales using the configured connector.

Configuration Properties#

The following configuration properties are available:

Property Name

Description

cassandra.contact-points

Comma-separated list of hosts in a Cassandra cluster. The Cassandra driver will use these contact points to discover cluster topology. At least one Cassandra host is required.

cassandra.native-protocol-port

The Cassandra server port running the native client protocol (defaults to 9042).

cassandra.consistency-level

Consistency levels in Cassandra refer to the level of consistency to be used for both read and write operations. More information about consistency levels can be found in the Cassandra consistency documentation. This property defaults to a consistency level of ONE. Possible values include ALL, EACH_QUORUM, QUORUM, LOCAL_QUORUM, ONE, TWO, THREE, LOCAL_ONE, ANY, SERIAL, LOCAL_SERIAL.

cassandra.allow-drop-table

Set to true to allow dropping Cassandra tables from Presto via DROP TABLE (defaults to false).

cassandra.username

Username used for authentication to the Cassandra cluster. This is a global setting used for all connections, regardless of the user who is connected to Presto.

cassandra.password

Password used for authentication to the Cassandra cluster. This is a global setting used for all connections, regardless of the user who is connected to Presto.

cassandra.protocol-version

It is possible to override the protocol version for older Cassandra clusters. This property defaults to V3. Possible values include V2, V3 and V4.

Note

If authorization is enabled, cassandra.username must have enough permissions to perform SELECT queries on the system.size_estimates table.

The following advanced configuration properties are available:

Property Name

Description

cassandra.fetch-size

Number of rows fetched at a time in a Cassandra query.

cassandra.partition-size-for-batch-select

Number of partitions batched together into a single select for a single partition key column table.

cassandra.split-size

Number of keys per split when querying Cassandra.

cassandra.splits-per-node

Number of splits per node. By default, the values from the system.size_estimates table are used. Only override when connecting to Cassandra versions < 2.1.5, which lacks the system.size_estimates table.

cassandra.client.read-timeout

Maximum time the Cassandra driver will wait for an answer to a query from one Cassandra node. Note that the underlying Cassandra driver may retry a query against more than one node in the event of a read timeout. Increasing this may help with queries that use an index.

cassandra.client.connect-timeout

Maximum time the Cassandra driver will wait to establish a connection to a Cassandra node. Increasing this may help with heavily loaded Cassandra clusters.

cassandra.client.so-linger

Number of seconds to linger on close if unsent data is queued. If set to zero, the socket will be closed immediately. When this option is non-zero, a socket will linger that many seconds for an acknowledgement that all data was written to a peer. This option can be used to avoid consuming sockets on a Cassandra server by immediately closing connections when they are no longer needed.

cassandra.retry-policy

Policy used to retry failed requests to Cassandra. This property defaults to DEFAULT. Using BACKOFF may help when queries fail with “not enough replicas”. The other possible values are DOWNGRADING_CONSISTENCY and FALLTHROUGH.

cassandra.load-policy.use-dc-aware

Set to true to use DCAwareRoundRobinPolicy (defaults to false).

cassandra.load-policy.dc-aware.local-dc

The name of the local datacenter for DCAwareRoundRobinPolicy.

cassandra.load-policy.dc-aware.used-hosts-per-remote-dc

Uses the provided number of host per remote datacenter as failover for the local hosts for DCAwareRoundRobinPolicy.

cassandra.load-policy.dc-aware.allow-remote-dc-for-local

Set to true to allow to use hosts of remote datacenter for local consistency level.

cassandra.load-policy.use-token-aware

Set to true to use TokenAwarePolicy (defaults to false).

cassandra.load-policy.shuffle-replicas

Set to true to use TokenAwarePolicy with shuffling of replicas (defaults to false).

cassandra.load-policy.use-white-list

Set to true to use WhiteListPolicy (defaults to false).

cassandra.load-policy.white-list.addresses

Comma-separated list of hosts for WhiteListPolicy.

cassandra.no-host-available-retry-timeout

Retry timeout for NoHostAvailableException (defaults to 1m).

cassandra.speculative-execution.limit

The number of speculative executions (defaults to 1).

cassandra.speculative-execution.delay

The delay between each speculative execution (defaults to 500ms).

cassandra.tls.enabled

Whether TLS security is enabled (defaults to false).

cassandra.tls.keystore-path

Path to the PEM or JKS key store.

cassandra.tls.truststore-path

Path to the PEM or JKS trust store.

cassandra.tls.keystore-password

Password for the key store.

cassandra.tls.truststore-password

Password for the trust store.

Querying Cassandra or ScyllaDB Tables#

The users table is an example Cassandra table from the Cassandra Getting Started guide. It can be created along with the mykeyspace keyspace using Cassandra’s cqlsh (CQL interactive terminal):

cqlsh> CREATE KEYSPACE mykeyspace
   ... WITH REPLICATION = { 'class' : 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor' : 1 };
cqlsh> USE mykeyspace;
cqlsh:mykeyspace> CREATE TABLE users (
              ...   user_id int PRIMARY KEY,
              ...   fname text,
              ...   lname text
              ... );

This table can be described in Presto:

DESCRIBE cassandra.mykeyspace.users;

 Column  |  Type   | Extra | Comment
---------+---------+-------+---------
 user_id | bigint  |       |
 fname   | varchar |       |
 lname   | varchar |       |
(3 rows)

This table can then be queried in Presto:

SELECT * FROM cassandra.mykeyspace.users;

Data types#

The data types mappings are as follows:

Cassandra

Presto

ASCII

VARCHAR

BIGINT

BIGINT

BLOB

VARBINARY

BOOLEAN

BOOLEAN

DECIMAL

DOUBLE

DOUBLE

DOUBLE

FLOAT

REAL

INET

VARCHAR(45)

INT

INTEGER

LIST<?>

VARCHAR

MAP<?, ?>

VARCHAR

SET<?>

VARCHAR

TEXT

VARCHAR

TIMESTAMP

TIMESTAMP

TIMEUUID

VARCHAR

VARCHAR

VARCHAR

VARINT

VARCHAR

SMALLINT

INTEGER

TINYINT

INTEGER

DATE

DATE

Any collection (LIST/MAP/SET) can be designated as FROZEN, and the value is mapped to VARCHAR. Additionally, blobs have the limitation that they cannot be empty.

Types not mentioned in the table above are not supported (e.g. tuple or UDT).

Partition keys can only be of the following types:

  • ASCII

  • TEXT

  • VARCHAR

  • BIGINT

  • BOOLEAN

  • DOUBLE

  • INET

  • INT

  • FLOAT

  • DECIMAL

  • TIMESTAMP

  • UUID

  • TIMEUUID

  • SMALLINT

  • TINYINT

  • DATE

Limitations#

  • Queries without filters containing the partition key result in fetching all partitions. This causes a full scan of the entire data set, therefore it’s much slower compared to a similar query with a partition key as a filter.

  • IN list filters are only allowed on index (that is, partition key or clustering key) columns.

  • Range (< or > and BETWEEN) filters can be applied only to the partition keys.