I don't speak for the project, but you might give it a day or two for people to respond and/or perhaps create a jira ticket. Seems like that's a reasonable data type that would get some traction - a json type. However, what would validation look like? That's one of the main reasons there are the data types and validators, in order to validate on insert.
On Mar 29, 2012, at 12:27 AM, Ben McCann wrote: > Any thoughts? I'd like to submit a patch, but only if it will be accepted. > > Thanks, > Ben > > > On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 8:58 AM, Ben McCann <b...@benmccann.com> wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I was wondering if it would be interesting to add some type of >> document-oriented data type. >> >> I've found it somewhat awkward to store document-oriented data in >> Cassandra today. I can make a JSON/Protobuf/Thrift, serialize it, and >> store it, but Cassandra cannot differentiate it from any other string or >> byte array. However, if my column validation_class could be a JsonType >> that would allow tools to potentially do more interesting introspection on >> the column value. E.g. bug >> 3647<https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-3647>calls for >> supporting arbitrarily nested "documents" in CQL. Running a >> query against the JSON column in Pig is possible as well, but again in this >> use case it would be helpful to be able to encode in column metadata that >> the column is stored as JSON. For debugging, running nightly reports, etc. >> it would be quite useful compared to the opaque string and byte array types >> we have today. JSON is appealing because it would be easy to implement. >> Something like Thrift or Protocol Buffers would actually be interesting >> since they would be more space efficient. However, they would also be a >> bit more difficult to implement because of the extra typing information >> they provide. I'm hoping with Cassandra 1.0's addition of compression that >> storing JSON is not too inefficient. >> >> Would there be interest in adding a JsonType? I could look at putting a >> patch together. >> >> Thanks, >> Ben >> >>
