SQL LIKE operation in Cassandra, is possible in v3.4+

For a long time it has not been possible to do a SELECT * FROM table WHERE firstname like ‘t%’; in Cassandra like you could in eg.. MySQL or any other Relation Database for that matter.

In Cassandra v3.4 this is now possible, BUT it requires some extra to do it right, and that is why I created this blog post cause I had trouble finding it.

The solution is to create a separate index, and not the secondary indexes that Cassandra came with, but a different index, called a SASI index.

This is what I have

CREATE TABLE bth.employee (
    id int,
    lastname text,
    firstname text,
    dateofbirth date,
    PRIMARY KEY (id, lastname, firstname)
) WITH CLUSTERING ORDER BY (lastname ASC, firstname ASC)
    AND bloom_filter_fp_chance = 0.01
    AND caching = {'keys': 'ALL', 'rows_per_partition': 'NONE'}
    AND comment = ''
    AND compaction = {'bucket_high': '1.5', 'bucket_low': '0.5', 'class': 'org.apache.cassandra.db.compaction.SizeTieredCompactionStrategy', 'enabled': 'true', 'max_threshold': '32', 'min_sstable_size': '50', 'min_threshold': '4', 'tombstone_compaction_interval': '86400', 'tombstone_threshold': '0.2', 'unchecked_tombstone_compaction': 'false'}
    AND compression = {'chunk_length_in_kb': '64', 'class': 'org.apache.cassandra.io.compress.LZ4Compressor'}
    AND crc_check_chance = 1.0
    AND dclocal_read_repair_chance = 0.1
    AND default_time_to_live = 0
    AND gc_grace_seconds = 864000
    AND max_index_interval = 2048
    AND memtable_flush_period_in_ms = 0
    AND min_index_interval = 128
    AND read_repair_chance = 0.0
    AND speculative_retry = '99PERCENTILE';

CREATE TABLE bth.employee (

id int,

lastname text,

firstname text,

dateofbirth date,

PRIMARY KEY (id, lastname, firstname)

) WITH CLUSTERING ORDER BY (lastname ASC, firstname ASC)

AND bloom_filter_fp_chance = 0.01

AND caching = {'keys': 'ALL', 'rows_per_partition': 'NONE'}

AND comment = ''

AND compaction = {'bucket_high': '1.5', 'bucket_low': '0.5', 'class': 'org.apache.cassandra.db.compaction.SizeTieredCompactionStrategy', 'enabled': 'true', 'max_threshold': '32', 'min_sstable_size': '50', 'min_threshold': '4', 'tombstone_compaction_interval': '86400', 'tombstone_threshold': '0.2', 'unchecked_tombstone_compaction': 'false'}

AND compression = {'chunk_length_in_kb': '64', 'class': 'org.apache.cassandra.io.compress.LZ4Compressor'}

AND crc_check_chance = 1.0

AND dclocal_read_repair_chance = 0.1

AND default_time_to_live = 0

AND gc_grace_seconds = 864000

AND max_index_interval = 2048

AND memtable_flush_period_in_ms = 0

AND min_index_interval = 128

AND read_repair_chance = 0.0

AND speculative_retry = '99PERCENTILE';

And the content of it looks like this

cqlsh:bth> select * from bth.employee;

 id | lastname    | firstname | dateofbirth
----+-------------+-----------+-------------
  1 |    eriksson |    tobias |  1973-06-11
  2 |  holgersson |    marcus |  1972-08-01
  7 |    eriksson |     linda |  1974-06-11
  3 | abrahamsson |    ingvar |  1959-10-05

(4 rows)
cqlsh:bth>

cqlsh:bth> select * from bth.employee;

id | lastname | firstname | dateofbirth

----+-------------+-----------+-------------

1 | eriksson | tobias | 1973-06-11

2 | holgersson | marcus | 1972-08-01

7 | eriksson | linda | 1974-06-11

3 | abrahamsson | ingvar | 1959-10-05

(4 rows)

cqlsh:bth>

And now I would like to search for all the rows that has a first name that starts with a ‘t’

In SQL that would have been :

SELECTÂ * FROMÂ bth.employee WHEREÂ firstname LIKEÂ ‘t%’;

In fact we could have done that on any column …. but in Cassandra it would result in something like this:

cqlsh:bth> SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname like 't%';
InvalidRequest: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="firstname LIKE '<term>%' restriction is only supported on properly indexed columns"
cqlsh:bth>

cqlsh:bth> SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname like 't%';

InvalidRequest: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="firstname LIKE '<term>%' restriction is only supported on properly indexed columns"

cqlsh:bth>

In Cassandra we first has to decide on which columns this should be possible, by creating an index like this:

CREATE CUSTOM INDEX employee_firstname_idx ON bth.employee (firstname) USING 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.SASIIndex' WITH OPTIONS = {'analyzer_class': 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.analyzer.StandardAnalyzer', 'case_sensitive': 'false'};

1	CREATE CUSTOM INDEX employee_firstname_idx ON bth.employee (firstname) USING 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.SASIIndex' WITH OPTIONS = {'analyzer_class': 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.analyzer.StandardAnalyzer', 'case_sensitive': 'false'};

And so you can now do the following

cqlsh:bth>SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname LIKE 't%';

 id | lastname | firstname | dateofbirth
----+----------+-----------+-------------
  1 | eriksson |    tobias |  1973-06-11

(1 rows)
cqlsh:bth>

cqlsh:bth>SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname LIKE 't%';

id | lastname | firstname | dateofbirth

----+----------+-----------+-------------

1 | eriksson | tobias | 1973-06-11

(1 rows)

cqlsh:bth>

But what if you decide that I would like to know all the employees that ends with an ‘s’ in their name, so something like this:

cqlsh:bth> SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname like '%s';
InvalidRequest: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="firstname LIKE '%<term>' restriction is only supported on properly indexed columns"
cqlsh:bth>

cqlsh:bth> SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname like '%s';

InvalidRequest: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="firstname LIKE '%<term>' restriction is only supported on properly indexed columns"

cqlsh:bth>

So to be able to search for something that contains we have to change the index like this instead:

CREATE CUSTOM INDEX employee_firstname_idx ON bth.employee (firstname) USING 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.SASIIndex' WITH OPTIONS = {'mode': 'CONTAINS', 'analyzer_class': 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.analyzer.StandardAnalyzer', 'case_sensitive': 'false'};

1	CREATE CUSTOM INDEX employee_firstname_idx ON bth.employee (firstname) USING 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.SASIIndex' WITH OPTIONS = {'mode': 'CONTAINS', 'analyzer_class': 'org.apache.cassandra.index.sasi.analyzer.StandardAnalyzer', 'case_sensitive': 'false'};

And now you can run that query again:

cqlsh:bth> SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname like '%s';

 id | lastname   | firstname | dateofbirth
----+------------+-----------+-------------
  1 |   eriksson |    tobias |  1973-06-11
  2 | holgersson |    marcus |  1972-08-01

(2 rows)
cqlsh:bth>

cqlsh:bth> SELECT * FROM bth.employee WHERE firstname like '%s';

id | lastname | firstname | dateofbirth

----+------------+-----------+-------------

1 | eriksson | tobias | 1973-06-11

2 | holgersson | marcus | 1972-08-01

(2 rows)

cqlsh:bth>

You can read more about the SASI index hereÂ https://docs.datastax.com/en/cql/3.3/cql/cql_reference/refCreateSASIIndex.html

Enjoy!

-Tobias

5 thoughts on “SQL LIKE operation in Cassandra, is possible in v3.4+”

Leoni Kurt says:

January 23, 2019 at 6:15 pm

Thank you! Hard to find anything related to this, it helped a lot.

Adi Satria Pangestu says:

January 21, 2020 at 5:22 am

Its like you learn my mind! You appear to understand a lot about this, such as you wrote the e-book in it or something. did you really learn from e-books?

Bachelor of Informatics Telkom University says:

April 8, 2020 at 12:40 pm

why it is not the secondary indexes?

Lembah Cirendeu says:

April 28, 2023 at 3:38 pm

good article

Arcico Weldy S says:

September 18, 2023 at 9:22 am

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