As well as your unlimited column names may all have the same prefix, right? Like "accounts".rowkey56, "accounts".rowkey78, etc. etc. so the "accounts gets a ton of compression then.
Later, Dean From: Tyler Hobbs <ty...@datastax.com<mailto:ty...@datastax.com>> Reply-To: "user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>" <user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>> Date: Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:46 AM To: "user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>" <user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>> Subject: Re: compression column metadata, you're still likely to get a reasonable amount of compression. This is especially true if there is some amount of repetition in the column names, values, or TTLs in wide rows. Compression will almost always be beneficial unless you're already somehow CPU bound or are using large column values that are high in entropy, such as pre-compressed or encrypted data.
