I am biased but I do prefer
val3 text CHECK NOT NULL AND JSON AND LENGTH() < 1024
Here is a similar accord CQL
BEGIN TRANSACTION
LET a = (…);
IF a IS NOT NULL
AND a.b IS NOT NULL
AND a.c IS NULL; THEN
— profit
END IF
COMMIT TRANSACTION
> On Apr 10, 2025, at 8:46 AM, Yifan Cai <yc25c...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Re: reserved keywords, “check” is currently not, and I don’t think it needs
> to be a reserved keyword with the proposal.
>
> From: C. Scott Andreas <sc...@paradoxica.net>
> Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2025 7:59:35 AM
> To: dev@cassandra.apache.org <dev@cassandra.apache.org>
> Cc: dev@cassandra.apache.org <dev@cassandra.apache.org>
> Subject: Re: Constraint's "not null" alignment with transactions and their
> simplification
>
> If the proposal does not introduce “check” as a reserved keyword that would
> require quoting in existing DDL/DML, this concern doesn’t apply and the email
> below can be ignored. This might be the case if “CHECK NOT NULL” is the full
> token introduced rather than “CHECK” separately from constraints that are
> checked.
>
> If “check” is introduced as a standalone reserved keyword: my primary
> feedback is on the introduction of reserved words in the CQL grammar that may
> affect compatibility of existing schemas.
>
> In the Cassandra 3.x series, several new CQL reserved words were added (more
> than necessary) and subsequently backed out, because it required users to
> begin quoting schemas and introduced incompatibility between 3.x and 4.x for
> queries and DDL that “just worked” before.
>
> The word “check” is used in many domains (test/evaluation engineering,
> finance, business processes, etc) and is likely to be used in user schemas.
> If the proposal introduces this as a reserved word that would require it to
> be quoted if used in table or column names, this will create incompatibility
> for existing user queries on upgrade.
>
> Otherwise, ignore me. :)
>
> Thanks,
>
> – Scott
>
> –––
> Mobile
>
>> On Apr 10, 2025, at 7:47 AM, Jon Haddad <j...@rustyrazorblade.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> This looks like a really nice improvement to me.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 10, 2025 at 7:27 AM Štefan Miklošovič <smikloso...@apache.org
>> <mailto:smikloso...@apache.org>> wrote:
>> Recently, David Capwell was commenting on constraints in one of Slack
>> threads (1) in dev channel and he suggested that the current form of "not
>> null" constraint we have right now in place, e.g like this
>>
>> create table ks.tb (id int primary key, val int check not_null(val));
>>
>> could be instead of that form used like this:
>>
>> create table ks.tb (id int primary key, val int check not null);
>>
>> That is - without the name of a column in the constraint's argument. The
>> reasoning behind that was that it is not only easier to read but there is
>> also this concept in transactions (cep-15) where there is also "not null"
>> used in some fashion and it would be nice if this was aligned so a user does
>> not encounter two usages of "not null"-s which are written down differently,
>> syntax-wise.
>>
>> Could the usage of "not null" in transactions be confirmed?
>>
>> This rather innocent suggestion brought an idea to us that constraints could
>> be quite simplified when it comes to their syntax, consider this:
>>
>> val int check not_null(val)
>> val text check json(val)
>> val text check lenght(val) < 1000
>>
>> to be used like this:
>>
>> val int check not null
>> val text check json
>> val text check length() < 1000
>>
>> more involved checks like this:
>>
>> val text check not_null(val) and json(val) and length(val) < 1000
>>
>> might be just simplified to:
>>
>> val text check not null and json and length() < 1000
>>
>> It almost reads like plain English. Isn't this just easier for an eye?
>>
>> The reason we kept the column names in constraint definitions is that,
>> frankly speaking, we just did not know any better at the time it was about
>> to be implemented. It is a little bit more tricky to be able to use it
>> without column names because in Parser.g / Antlr we just bound the grammar
>> around constraints to a column name directly there. When column names are
>> not going to be there anymore, we need to bind it later in the code behind
>> the parser in server code. It is doable, it was just about being a little
>> bit more involved there.
>>
>> Also, one reason to keep the name of a column was that we might specify
>> different columns in a constraint from a column that is defined on to have
>> cross-column constraints but we abandoned this idea altogether for other
>> reasons which rendered the occurrence of a column name in a constraint
>> definition redundant.
>>
>> To have some overview of what would be possible to do with this proposal:
>>
>> val3 text CHECK SOMECONSTRAINT('a');
>> val3 text CHECK JSON;
>> val3 text CHECK SOMECONSTRAINT('a') > 1;
>> val3 text CHECK SOMECONSTRAINT('a', 'b', 'c') > 1;
>> val3 text CHECK JSON AND LENGTH() < 600;
>> afternoon time CHECK afternoon >= '12:00:00' AND afternoon =< '23:59:59';
>> val3 text CHECK NOT NULL AND JSON AND LENGTH() < 1024
>>
>> In addition to the specification of constraints without columns, what would
>> be possible to do is to also specify arguments to constraints. It is
>> currently not possible and there is no constraint which would accept
>> arguments to its function but I think that to be as flexible as possible and
>> prepare for the future, we might implement it as well.
>>
>> Constraints in their current form are already usable however I just think
>> that if we do not simplify, align and extend the syntax right now, before it
>> is baked in in a release, then we will never do it as it will be quite
>> tricky to extend this without breaking it and maintaining two grammars at
>> the same time would be very complex if not flat out impossible.
>>
>> Are you open to the simplification of constraint definitions as suggested
>> and what is your feedback about that? I already have a working POC which
>> just needs to be polished and tests fixed to accommodate the new approach.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> (1) https://the-asf.slack.com/archives/CK23JSY2K/p1742409054164389
