[CASSANDRA-9243] Literals should be valid selectors in SELECT statements

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Low
• Resolution: Duplicate
• Fix Version/s: 3.11.5
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Michaël Figuière
• Created: 25/Apr/15 04:35
• Updated: 01/Aug/21 11:28
• Resolved: 15/Feb/16 10:57

Description

Literals are currently not acceptable selectors in SELECT statements:

<selector> ::= <identifier>
             | WRITETIME '(' <identifier> ')'
             | TTL '(' <identifier> ')'
             | <function> '(' (<selector> (',' <selector>)*)? ')'

This wasn't a big deal up to now as it wasn't very useful for users, but with UDFs being added in Cassandra 3.0, this means that literals aren't valid parameters of function. I believe it would actually be useful for several use cases:

• To allow developers to test their own functions without having to set a value to a column to then pass it as an argument to the function.
• To make it possible to write function that require a constant parameter such as pow(int, int) -> int or contains(set<text>, text) -> boolean.

Additionally, this limitation is an inconsistency as literals are allowed in functions when used in INSERT statements.

Issue Links

• duplicates: CASSANDRA-10783 Allow literal value as parameter of UDF & UDA
• is depended upon by: CASSANDRA-9253 Bind markers should be allowed in function arguments of Selectors