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Eric Evans commented on CASSANDRA-2025:
---------------------------------------

Examples that have come up in other discussions:

{{/}} as delimiter (2 different people, independently fwiw):

{code:style=SQL}
-- keyword arguments
CREATE KEYSPACE keyspace WITH ... AND strategy_options/DC1 = 1 ...

-- compound columns
SELECT columnA/columnB/column1/column2 FROM Standard2 USING CONSISTENCY.QUORUM 
WHERE KEY = key;
UPDATE Standard2 SET columnA/columnB = valueC, column1/column2 = value3 WHERE 
KEY = key;
{code}

Sticking with dots and using single quotes to escape problematic literals:

{code:style=SQL}
-- keyword arguments
CREATE KEYSPACE keyspace WITH ... AND strategy_options.DC1 = 1 ...

-- compound columns
SELECT '10.5'."string"."9.5" FROM Standard2 USING CONSISTENCY.QUORUM WHERE KEY 
= key;
UPDATE Standard2 SET '1.2'.1 = valueC, 14.9 = value3 WHERE KEY = key;
{code}

I'm least fond of this last one though, it strikes me as something that you'd 
need to do after painting yourself into a corner (which is what I'm trying to 
avoid here :)). 

It also seems the least readable, and most prone to confusion. For example, the 
14.9 above, is that a float with value fourteen point nine, or two integer 
columns of 14 and 9? Do you have to escape every column name that appears on 
the left of assignment?

> generalized way of expressing hierarchical values
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CASSANDRA-2025
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-2025
>             Project: Cassandra
>          Issue Type: Sub-task
>          Components: API
>            Reporter: Eric Evans
>            Assignee: Eric Evans
>            Priority: Minor
>             Fix For: 0.8
>
>   Original Estimate: 0h
>  Remaining Estimate: 0h
>
> While hashing out {{CREATE KEYSPACE}}, it became obvious that we needed a 
> syntax for expressing hierarchical values.  Properties like 
> {{replication_factor}} can be expressed simply using keyword arguments like 
> ({{replication_factor = 3}}), but {{strategy_options}} is a map of strings.
> The solution I took in CASSANDRA-1709 was to dot-delimit "map name" and 
> option key, so for example:
> {code:style=SQL}
> CREATE KEYSPACE keyspace WITH ... AND strategy_options.DC1 = "1" ...
> {code}
> This led me to wonder if this was a general enough approach for any future 
> cases that might come up.  One example might be compound/composite column 
> names.  Dot-delimiting is a bad choice here since it rules out ever 
> introducing a float literal.
> One suggestion would be to colon-delimit, so for example:
> {code:style=SQL}
> CREATE KEYSPACE keyspace WITH ... AND strategy_options:DC1 = "1" ...
> {code}
> Or in the case of composite column names:
> {code:style=SQL}
> SELECT columnA:columnB,column1:column2 FROM Standard2 USING 
> CONSISTENCY.QUORUM WHERE KEY = key;
> UPDATE Standard2 SET columnA:columnB = valueC, column1:column2 = value3 WHERE 
> KEY = key;
> {code}
> As an aside, this also led me to the conclusion that {{CONSISTENCY.<LEVEL>}} 
> is probably a bad choice for consistency level specification.  It mirrors the 
> underlying enum for no good reason and should probably be changed to 
> {{CONSISTENCY <LEVEL>}} (i.e. omitting the separator).  For example:
> {code:style=SQL}
> SELECT column FROM Standard2 USING CONSISTENCY QUORUM WHERE KEY = key;
> {code}
> Thoughts?
> *Edit: improved final example*
> *Edit: restore final example, create new one (gah).*

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