On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 9:28 AM, Matthew Hillsborough <matthew.hillsboro...@gmail.com> wrote: > I am trying to understand some fundamentals in Cassandra, I was under the > impression that one of the advantages a developer can take in designing a > data model is by dynamically adding columns to a row identified by a key. > That means I can model my data so that if it makes sense, a key can be > something such as a user_id from a relational database, and I can for > example, create arbitrary amounts of columns that relate to that user.
Fundamentally? No. Experience has shown that having schema to say "email column is text, and birth date column is a timestamp" is very useful as projects and teams grow. That said, if you really don't know what kinds of attributes might apply (generally because they are user-generated) you can use a Map. > Wouldn't this type of model make more sense to just stuff into a relational > database? There's nothing wrong with the relational model per se (subject to the usual explanation about needing to denormalize to scale). Cassandra is about making applications scale, not throwing the SQL baby out with the bathwater for the sake of being different. -- Jonathan Ellis Project Chair, Apache Cassandra co-founder, http://www.datastax.com @spyced
