Jason Kania created CASSANDRA-8480:
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Summary: Update of primary key should be possible
Key: CASSANDRA-8480
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-8480
Project: Cassandra
Issue Type: Improvement
Components: API
Reporter: Jason Kania
While attempting to update a column in a row, I encountered the error
PRIMARY KEY part thingy found in SET part
The error is not helpful as it doesn't state why this is problem so I looked on
google and encountered many, many entries from people who have experienced the
issue including those with single column table who have to hack to work around
this.
After looking around further in the documentation, I discovered that it is not
possible to update a primary key but I still have not found a good explanation.
I suspect that that this is because it would change the indexing location of
the record effectively requiring a delete followed by an insert. If the
question is one of guaranteeing no update to a deleted row, a client will have
the same issue.
To me, this really should be handled behind the API because:
1) it is an expected capability in a database to update all columns and having
these limitations only puts off potential users especially when they have to
discover the limitation after the fact
2) being able to use a column in a WHERE clause requires it to be part of the
primary key so what this limitation means is if you can update a column, you
can't search for it, or if you can search on a column, you can't update it
which leaves a serious gap in handling a wide number of use cases.
3) deleting and inserting a row with an updated primary key will mean sucking
in all the data from the row up to the client and sending it all back down even
when a single column in the primary key was all that was updated.
Why not document the issue but make the interface more usable by supporting the
operation?
Jason
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