[CASSANDRA-19939] Add sstabledump option to display only tombstones

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 5.1
• Component/s: Tool/sstable
• Change Category: Operability
• Complexity: Low Hanging Fruit
• Platform: All

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/commit/b11909b611de811ed2f030848820a17c77df7013

Test and Documentation Plan

ci and manual execution

• Assignee: Stefan Miklosovic
• Reporter: Brad Schoening

Authors

Stefan Miklosovic

Reviewers

Brad Schoening

• Created: 20/Sep/24 17:03
• Updated: 26/Sep/24 08:03
• Resolved: 26/Sep/24 08:03

Description

The utility sstabledump would be more useful if it had an option to display just tombsones, much like the -e option to display only partition keys. 

When tombstones exist, it should display the partition key, clustering columns and the range, row or cell tombstone.

When investigating tombstone issues, a common way is to run sstabledump.  However, the output can be very large, on the order of gigabytes and scanning the JSON output for tombstone entries is a hunt-and-peck experience or requires using a tool like 'jq'.  Being able to just view the tombstones would eliminate the issue of the output being too large and not require extraneous tools.

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #3566