In Cassandra terminology, what is TimeUUID?

Question

In Cassandra terminology, what is TimeUUID and when is it used?

Answer 1

TimeUUID is one of six concrete implementations of the abstract class AbstractType.

For ColumnFamilies you have the possiblity to specify an attribute called CompareWith. (SuperColumns have a similar CompareSubcolumnsWith attribute).

Valid values for this attribute are classes that implements the abstract class AbstractType (eg. TimeUUID). The CompareWith attribute tells Cassandra how to sort the columns for slicing operations.

If you are using Java and using cassandra with TimeUUID I would recommend to read this section of the cassandra FAQ.