Cassandra: How to insert a new wide row with good performance using CQL

Question

I am evaluating cassandra. I am using the datastax driver and CQL.

I would like to store some data with the following internal structure, where the names are differ

Answer 1

You are not the only person to experience this. I wrote a blog post a while ago focused more on conversion between CQL and thrift, but there are links to mail list issues of folks seeing the same thing (the performance issue of wide-row inserts were my initial motivations for investigating): http://thelastpickle.com/blog/2013/09/13/CQL3-to-Astyanax-Compatibility.html

In sum - CQL is great for removing the burdens of dealing with typing and understanding the data model for folks new to Cassandra. The DataStax driver is well written and contains lots of useful features.

However, the Thrift API is more than slightly faster for wide row inserts. The Netflix blog does not go in to this specific use case so much. Further, the Thrift API is not legacy so long as people are using it (many folks are). It's an ASF project and as such is not run by any single vendor.

In general, with any Cassandra-based application, if you find a way of doing something that meets (or often exceeds) the performance requirements of your workload, stick with it.