You may want to be careful as column 1 could be stored in both files until compaction as well when column 1 has encountered changes and cassandra returns the latest column 1 version but two sstables contain column 1. (At least that is the way I understand it).
Later, Dean From: "Takenori Sato (Cloudian)" <ts...@cloudian.com<mailto:ts...@cloudian.com>> Reply-To: "user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>" <user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>> Date: Monday, September 16, 2013 8:12 PM To: "user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>" <user@cassandra.apache.org<mailto:user@cassandra.apache.org>> Subject: Re: questions related to the SSTable file Hi, > 1) I will expect same row key could show up in both sstable2json output, as > this one row exists in both SSTable files, right? Yes. > 2) If so, what is the boundary? Will Cassandra guarantee the column level as > the boundary? What I mean is that for one column's data, it will be > guaranteed to be either in the first file, or 2nd file, right? There is no > chance that Cassandra will cut the data of one column into 2 part, and one > part stored in first SSTable file, and the other part stored in second > SSTable file. Is my understanding correct? No. > 3) If what we are talking about are only the SSTable files in snapshot, > incremental backup SSTable files, exclude the runtime SSTable files, will > anything change? For snapshot or incremental backup SSTable files, first can > one row data still may exist in more than one SSTable file? And any boundary > change in this case? > 4) If I want to use incremental backup SSTable files as the way to catch data > being changed, is it a good way to do what I try to archive? In this case, > what happen in the following example: I don't fully understand, but snapshot will do. It will create hard links to all the SSTable files present at snapshot. Let me explain how SSTable and compaction works. Suppose we have 4 files being compacted(the last one has bee just flushed, then which triggered compaction). Note that file names are simplified. - Color-1-Data.db: [{Lavender: {hex: #E6E6FA}}, {Blue: {hex: #0000FF}}] - Color-2-Data.db: [{Green: {hex: #008000}}, {Blue: {hex2: #2c86ff}}] - Color-3-Data.db: [{Aqua: {hex: #00FFFF}}, {Green: {hex2: #32CD32}}, {Blue: {}}] - Color-4-Data.db: [{Magenta: {hex: #FF00FF}}, {Gold: {hex: #FFD700}}] They are created by the following operations. - Add a row of (key, column, column_value = Blue, hex, #0000FF) - Add a row of (key, column, column_value = Lavender, hex, #E6E6FA) ---- memtable is flushed => Color-1-Data.db ---- - Add a row of (key, column, column_value = Green, hex, #008000) - Add a column of (key, column, column_value = Blue, hex2, #2c86ff) ---- memtable is flushed => Color-2-Data.db ---- - Add a column of (key, column, column_value = Green, hex2, #32CD32) - Add a row of (key, column, column_value = Aqua, hex, #00FFFF) - Delete a row of (key = Blue) ---- memtable is flushed => Color-3-Data.db ---- - Add a row of (key, column, column_value = Magenta, hex, #FF00FF) - Add a row of (key, column, column_value = Gold, hex, #FFD700) ---- memtable is flushed => Color-4-Data.db ---- Then, a compaction will merge all those fragments together into the latest ones as follows. - Color-5-Data.db: [{Lavender: {hex: #E6E6FA}, {Aqua: {hex: #00FFFF}, {Green: {hex: #008000, hex2: #32CD32}}, {Magenta: {hex: #FF00FF}}, {Gold: {hex: #FFD700}}] * assuming RandomPartitioner is used Hope they would help. - Takenori (2013/09/17 10:51), java8964 java8964 wrote: Hi, I have some questions related to the SSTable in the Cassandra, as I am doing a project to use it and hope someone in this list can share some thoughts. My understand is the SSTable is per column family. But each column family could have multi SSTable files. During the runtime, one row COULD split into more than one SSTable file, even this is not good for performance, but it does happen, and Cassandra will try to merge and store one row data into one SSTable file during compassion. The question is when one row is split in multi SSTable files, what is the boundary? Or let me ask this way, if one row exists in 2 SSTable files, if I run sstable2json tool to run on both SSTable files individually: 1) I will expect same row key could show up in both sstable2json output, as this one row exists in both SSTable files, right? 2) If so, what is the boundary? Will Cassandra guarantee the column level as the boundary? What I mean is that for one column's data, it will be guaranteed to be either in the first file, or 2nd file, right? There is no chance that Cassandra will cut the data of one column into 2 part, and one part stored in first SSTable file, and the other part stored in second SSTable file. Is my understanding correct? 3) If what we are talking about are only the SSTable files in snapshot, incremental backup SSTable files, exclude the runtime SSTable files, will anything change? For snapshot or incremental backup SSTable files, first can one row data still may exist in more than one SSTable file? And any boundary change in this case? 4) If I want to use incremental backup SSTable files as the way to catch data being changed, is it a good way to do what I try to archive? In this case, what happen in the following example: For column family A: at Time 0, one row key (key1) has some data. It is being stored and back up in SSTable file 1. at Time 1, if any column for key1 has any change (a new column insert, a column updated/deleted, or even whole row being deleted), I will expect this whole row exists in the any incremental backup SSTable files after time 1, right? What happen if the above row just happen to store in more than one SSTable file? at Time 0, one row key (key1) has some data, and it just is stored in SSTable file1 and file2, and being backup. at Time 1, if one column is added in row key1, and the change in fact will happen in SSTable file2 only in this case, and if we do a incremental backup after that, what SSTable files should I expect in this backup? Both SSTable files? Or Just SSTable file 2? I was thinking incremental backup SSTable files are good candidate for catching data being changed, but as one row data could exist in multi SSTable file makes thing complex now. Did anyone have any experience to use SSTable file in this way? What are the lessons? Thanks Yong
