Notice how users react to these things. At one point for example we decided to add a ';' to the CLI.
http://www.amazon.com/Cassandra-Definitive-Guide-Eben-Hewitt/dp/1449390412 The initial chapters on downloading and installing the product get the reader started using Cassandra immediately. Then the bumps in the road appear. The current version of Cassandra requires a semicolon to end each statement in the command line interface (CLI) client - that 's missing in the book. This is noted in the errata on the O'Reilly site as "unconfirmed", and if you're coming from a MySQL/Oracle background it's something you might try, otherwise, it's frustrating. It confuses users and here is the kicker: [default@app] use app; use app; Syntax error at position 9: missing EOF at 'use' You can not even put two statements on the same line. So the ';' is semi useless syntax. What have learned we learned from this? [default@app] set people['ecapriolo']['last']='capriolo'; org.apache.cassandra.db.marshal.MarshalException: cannot parse 'last' as hex bytes Ow dear... are you saying... [default@app] set people[ascii('ecapriolo')][ascii('last')]=ascii('capriolo'); Value inserted. Is their a way to move things forward without hurting backwards compatibility of the CLI? Edward