`duration` is a new native type that was introduced in Cassandra 3.10 [1].
Support for parsing and the internal representation of the type was added in
8fa47b74e8.
Important note: The version of cqlsh distributed with Scylla does not have
support for durations included (it was added to Cassandra in [2]). To test this
change, you can use cqlsh distributed with Cassandra.
Duration types are useful when working with time-series tables, because they can
be used to manipulate date-time values in relative terms.
Two interesting applications are:
- Aggregation by time intervals [3]:
`SELECT * FROM my_table GROUP BY floor(time, 3h)`
- Querying on changes in date-times:
`SELECT ... WHERE last_heartbeat_time < now() - 3h`
(Note: neither of these is currently supported, though columns with duration
values are.)
Internally, durations are represented as three signed counters: one for months,
for days, and for nanoseconds. Each of these counters is serialized using a
variable-length encoding which is described in version 5 of the CQL native
protocol specification.
The representation of a duration as three counters means that a semantic
ordering on durations doesn't exist: Is `1mo` greater than `1mo1d`? We cannot
know, because some months have more days than others. Durations can only have a
concrete absolute value when they are "attached" to absolute date-time
references. For example, `2015-04-31 at 12:00:00 + 1mo`.
That duration values are not comparable presents some difficulties for the
implementation, because most CQL types are. Like in Cassandra's implementation
[2], I adopted a similar strategy to the way restrictions on the `counter` type
are checked. A type "references" a duration if it is either a duration or it
contains a duration (like a `tuple<..., duration, ...>`, or a UDT with a
duration member).
The following restrictions apply on durations. Note that some of these contexts
are either experimental features (materialized views), or not currently
supported at run-time (though support exists in the parser and code, so it is
prudent to add the restrictions now):
- Durations cannot appear in any part of a primary key, either for tables or
materialized views.
- Durations cannot be directly used as the element type of a `set`, nor can they
be used as the key type of a `map`. Because internal ordering on durations is
based on a byte-level comparison, this property of Cassandra was intended to
help avoid user confusion around ordering of collection elements.
- Secondary indexes on durations are not supported.
- "Slice" relations (<=, <, >=, >) are not supported on durations with `WHERE`
restrictions (like `SELECT ... WHERE span <= 3d`). Multi-column restrictions
only work with clustering columns, which cannot be `duration` due to the
first rule.
- "Slice" relations are not supported on durations with query conditions (like
`UPDATE my_table ... IF span > 5us`).
Backwards incompatibility note:
As described in the documentation [4], duration literals take one of two
forms: either ISO 8601 formats (there are three), or a "standard" format. The ISO
8601 formats start with "P" (like "P5W"). Therefore, identifiers that have this
form are no longer supported.
Fixes#2240.
[1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-11873
[2] bfd57d13b7
[3] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-11871
[4] http://cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest/cql/types.html#working-with-durations
509626fe08