==================================================== How does ScyllaDB LWT Differ from Apache Cassandra ? ==================================================== ScyllaDB is making an effort to be compatible with Cassandra, down to the level of limitations of the implementation. How is it different? * ScyllaDB most commonly uses fewer rounds than Cassandra to complete a lightweight transaction. While Cassandra issues a separate read query to fetch the old record, scylla piggybacks the read result on the response to the prepare round. * ScyllaDB will automatically use synchronous commit log write mode for all lightweight transaction writes. Before a lightweight transaction completes, scylla will ensure that the data in it has hit the device. This is done in all commitlog_sync modes. * Conditional statements return a result set, and unlike Cassandra, ScyllaDB result set metadata doesn’t change from execution to execution: ScyllaDB always returns the old version of the row, regardless of whether the condition is true or not. This ensures conditional statements work well with prepared statements. * For batch statement, the returned result set contains an old row for every conditional statement in the batch, in statement order. Cassandra returns results in clustering key order. * For batch statement, ScyllaDB allows mixing `IF EXISTS`, `IF NOT EXISTS`, and other conditions for the same row. * Unlike Cassandra, ScyllaDB uses per-core data partitioning, so the RPC that is done to perform a transaction talks directly to the right core on a peer replica, avoiding the concurrency overhead. This is, of course, true, if ScyllaDB’s own shard-aware driver is used - otherwise we add an extra hop to the right core at the coordinator node. * ScyllaDB does not store hints for lightweight transaction writes, since this is redundant as all such writes are already present in system.paxos table. More on :doc:`Lightweight Transactions (LWT) ` Additional Notes ================ Mixing LWT IF clauses in BATCH statements ----------------------------------------- `Conditional batches` are `BATCH` statements that contain one or more conditional statements. A batch is executed only if all conditions in all statements are true, and all conditions are evaluated against the initial database state. ScyllaDB allows using different conditions such as `IF EXISTS`, `IF NOT EXISTS`, and other `IF` expressions within the same batch, even if the statements affect the same row. For example, the following batch statement is valid in ScyllaDB and will be applied successfully: .. code-block:: cql BEGIN BATCH UPDATE movies.nowshowing SET main_actor = NULL WHERE movie = 'Invisible Man' IF director = 'Leigh Whannell' UPDATE movies.nowshowing SET released = NULL WHERE movie = 'Invisible Man' IF EXISTS APPLY BATCH; [applied] | movie | location | run_day | run_time | director | main_actor | released | theater -----------+---------------+----------+---------+----------+----------------+----------------+------------+--------- True | Invisible Man | null | null | null | Leigh Whannell | Elisabeth Moss | 2022-04-06 | null True | Invisible Man | null | null | null | Leigh Whannell | Elisabeth Moss | 2022-04-06 | null By contrast, Cassandra does not allow mixing `IF EXISTS`, `IF NOT EXISTS`, and other conditions for the same row: .. code-block:: cql BEGIN BATCH UPDATE movies.nowshowing SET main_actor = NULL WHERE movie = 'Invisible Man' IF director = 'Leigh Whannell' UPDATE movies.nowshowing SET released = NULL WHERE movie = 'Invisible Man' IF EXISTS APPLY BATCH; InvalidRequest: Error from server: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="Cannot mix IF conditions and IF EXISTS for the same row" Moreover, ScyllaDB does not return an error even if the conditions are impossible to satisfly, i.e. a batch contains `IF EXISTS` and `IF NOT EXISTS` clauses for the same row. The following query will be executed, though not applied, as the conditions are impossible to satisfy: .. code-block:: cql BEGIN BATCH INSERT INTO movies.nowshowing (movie, location, theater, run_day, run_time) VALUES ('Invisible Man', 'Times Square', 'AMC Empire 25', 'Saturday', '23:00:00') IF NOT EXISTS UPDATE movies.nowshowing SET theater = NULL WHERE movie = 'Invisible Man' AND location = 'Times Square' AND run_day = 'Saturday' AND run_time = '23:00:00' IF EXISTS APPLY BATCH; [applied] | movie | location | run_day | run_time | director | main_actor | released | theater -----------+-------+----------+---------+----------+----------+------------+----------+--------- False | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null False | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null In comparison, Cassandra returns an error in this case: .. code-block:: cql BEGIN BATCH INSERT INTO movies.nowshowing (movie, location, theater, run_day, run_time) VALUES ('Invisible Man', 'Times Square', 'AMC Empire 25', 'Saturday', '23:00:00') IF NOT EXISTS UPDATE movies.nowshowing SET theater = NULL WHERE movie = 'Invisible Man' AND location = 'Times Square' AND run_day = 'Saturday' AND run_time = '23:00:00' IF EXISTS APPLY BATCH; InvalidRequest: Error from server: code=2200 [Invalid query] message="Cannot mix IF EXISTS and IF NOT EXISTS conditions for the same row"