[CASSANDRA-7206] UDT - allow null / non-existant attributes

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.1 rc1
• Component/s: Legacy/CQL
• Assignee: Sylvain Lebresne
• Reporter: Robert Stupp

Authors

Sylvain Lebresne

Reviewers

Aleksey Yeschenko

• Created: 12/May/14 11:46
• Updated: 16/Apr/19 09:31
• Resolved: 23/May/14 16:57

Description

C* 2.1 CQL User-Defined-Types are really fine and useful.

But it lacks the possibility to omit attributes or set them to null.

Would be great to have the possibility to create UDT "instances" with some attributes missing.

Also changing the UDT definition (for example: alter type add new_attr) will break running applications that rely on the "previous" definition of the UDT.

For exmple:

CREATE TYPE foo (
   attr_one text,
   attr_two int );

CREATE TABLE bar (
   id int,
   comp foo );

INSERT INTO bar (id, com) VALUES (1, {attr_one: 'cassandra', attr_two: 2});

works

INSERT INTO bar (id, com) VALUES (1, {attr_one: 'cassandra'});

does not work

ALTER TYPE foo ADD attr_three timestamp;

INSERT INTO bar (id, com) VALUES (1, {attr_one: 'cassandra', attr_two: 2});

will no longer work (missing attribute)

Issue Links

• is related to: CASSANDRA-7209 Consider changing UDT serialization format before 2.1 release.

Sub-Tasks

• cqlsh support for null values in UDT: Resolved