The First Table

For the next few chapters, we'll be building the persistence layer for an application called MyStatus, which allows its users to post status updates for their friends to see. In this chapter, we'll make the first table of that persistence layer, which will store user profiles.

In Chapter 1, Getting Up and Running with Cassandra, you set up a local Cassandra installation, started the cqlsh, and ran some CQL commands. Now we're prepared to hit the ground running. This chapter will provide a whirlwind tour of many core Cassandra concepts such as the following:

• How to configure keyspaces
• How Cassandra tables are structured
• Cassandra's type system
• How to create a table
• How to insert rows into a table
• How to retrieve rows by primary key
• How to query for all rows in a table
• How to page through large result sets