scylladb/docs/cql/definitions.rst

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.. _UUID: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier

.. highlight:: cql

Definitions
-----------

.. _conventions:

Conventions
^^^^^^^^^^^

To aid in specifying the CQL syntax, we will use the following conventions in this document:

- Language rules will be given in an informal `BNF variant
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form#Variants>`_ notation. In particular, we'll use square brackets
  (``[ item ]``) for optional items, ``*`` and ``+`` for repeated items (where ``+`` imply at least one).
- The grammar will also use the following convention for convenience: non-terminal term will be lowercase (and link to
  their definition) while terminal keywords will be provided "all caps". Note, however, that keywords are
  :ref:`identifiers` and are thus case insensitive in practice. We will also define some early construction using
  regexp, which we'll indicate with ``re(<some regular expression>)``.
- The grammar is provided for documentation purposes and leaves some minor details out.  For instance, the comma on the
  last column definition in a ``CREATE TABLE`` statement is optional but supported if present even though the grammar in
  this document suggests otherwise. Also, not everything accepted by the grammar is necessarily valid CQL.
- References to keywords or pieces of CQL code in running text will be shown in a ``fixed-width font``.


.. _identifiers:

Identifiers and keywords
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The CQL language uses *identifiers* (or *names*) to identify tables, columns, and other objects. An identifier is a token
matching the regular expression ``[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*``.

A number of such identifiers, like ``SELECT`` or ``WITH``, are *keywords*. They have a fixed meaning for the language,
and most are reserved. The list of those keywords can be found in :ref:`appendix-A`.

Identifiers and (unquoted) keywords are case insensitive. Thus ``SELECT`` is the same as ``select`` or ``sElEcT``, and
``myId`` is the same than ``myid`` or ``MYID``. A convention often used (in particular by the samples of this
documentation) is to use upper case for keywords and lower case for other identifiers.

There is a second kind of identifier called *quoted identifiers*, defined by enclosing an arbitrary sequence of
characters (non-empty) in double-quotes(``"``). Quoted identifiers are never keywords. Thus ``"select"`` is not a
reserved keyword and can be used to refer to a column (note that using this is particularly advised), while ``select``
would raise a parsing error. Also, contrary to unquoted identifiers and keywords, quoted identifiers are case
sensitive (``"My Quoted Id"`` is *different* from ``"my quoted id"``). A fully lowercase quoted identifier that matches
``[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*`` is, however, *equivalent* to the unquoted identifier obtained by removing the double-quote (so
``"myid"`` is equivalent to ``myid`` and to ``myId`` but different from ``"myId"``).  Inside a quoted identifier, the
double-quote character can be repeated to escape it, so ``"foo "" bar"`` is a valid identifier.

.. note:: *quoted identifiers* allow to declare columns with arbitrary names, and those can sometimes clash with
   specific names used by the server. For instance, when using a conditional update, the server will respond with a
   result-set containing a special result named ``"[applied]"``. If you’ve declared a column with such a name, this
   could potentially confuse some tools and should be avoided. In general, unquoted identifiers should be preferred, but
   if you use quoted identifiers, it is strongly advised to avoid any name enclosed by squared brackets (like
   ``"[applied]"``) and any name that looks like a function call (like ``"f(x)"``).

More formally, we have:

.. code-block::
   
   identifier: `unquoted_identifier` | `quoted_identifier`
   unquoted_identifier: re('[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*')
   quoted_identifier: '"' (any character where " can appear if doubled)+ '"'

.. _constants:

Constants
^^^^^^^^^

CQL defines the following kind of *constants*:

.. code-block:: none

   constant: `string` | `integer` | `float` | `boolean` | `uuid` | `blob` | NULL
   
   string: '\'' (any character where ' can appear if doubled)+ '\''
         : '$$' (any character other than '$$') '$$'
   
   integer: re('-?[0-9]+')
   
   float: re('-?[0-9]+(\.[0-9]*)?([eE][+-]?[0-9+])?') | NAN | INFINITY
   
   boolean: TRUE | FALSE
   
   uuid: `hex`{8}-`hex`{4}-`hex`{4}-`hex`{4}-`hex`{12}
   
   hex: re("[0-9a-fA-F]")
   
   blob: '0' ('x' | 'X') `hex`+

In other words:

- A string constant is an arbitrary sequence of characters enclosed by single-quote(``'``). A single-quote
  can be included by repeating it, e.g. ``'It''s raining today'``. Those are not to be confused with quoted
  :ref:`identifiers` that use double-quotes. Alternatively, a string can be defined by enclosing the arbitrary sequence
  of characters by two dollar characters, in which case single-quote can be used without escaping (``$$It's raining
  today$$``). That latter form is often used when defining user-defined functions to avoid having to
  escape single-quote characters in function body (as they are more likely to occur than ``$$``).
- Integer, float, and boolean constant are defined as expected. Note, however, than float allows the special ``NaN`` and
  ``Infinity`` constants.
- CQL supports UUID_ constants.
- Blob content types are provided in hexadecimal and prefixed by ``0x``.
- The special ``NULL`` constant denotes the absence of value.

For how these constants are typed, see the :doc:`data-types <types>` document.

Terms
^^^^^

CQL has the notion of a *term*, which denotes the kind of values that CQL support. Terms are defined by:

.. code-block:: cql

   term: `constant` | `literal` | `function_call` | `arithmetic_operation` | `type_hint` | `bind_marker`
   
   literal: `collection_literal` | `udt_literal` | `tuple_literal`
   
   function_call: `identifier` '(' [ `term` (',' `term`)* ] ')'
   
   arithmetic_operation: '-' `term` | `term` ('+' | '-' | '*' | '/' | '%') `term`
   
   type_hint: '(' `cql_type` `)` term
   
   bind_marker: '?' | ':' `identifier`

A term is thus one of:

- A :ref:`constant <constants>`.
- A literal for either :ref:`a collection <collections>` (including usage of list_or_vector_literal 
  for :ref:`a vector <vectors>`), a user-defined type or a tuple (see the linked sections for details).
- An arithmetic operation between terms. 
- A *type hint*
- A bind marker, which denotes a variable to be bound at execution time. See the section on :ref:`prepared-statements`
  for details. A bind marker can be either anonymous (``?``) or named (``:some_name``). The latter form provides a more
  convenient way to refer to the variable for binding it and should generally be preferred.


Comments
^^^^^^^^

A comment in CQL is a line beginning by either double dashes (``--``) or double slash (``//``).

Multi-line comments are also supported through enclosure within ``/*`` and ``*/`` (but nesting is not supported).

::

    -- This is a comment
    // This is a comment too
    /* This is
       a multi-line comment */

Statements
^^^^^^^^^^

CQL consists of statements that can be divided into the following categories:

- :doc:`Data Definition </cql/ddl/>` statements - to define and change how the data is stored (keyspaces and tables).
- :doc:`Data Manipulation </cql/dml/>` statements - for selecting, inserting and deleting data.
- :ref:`cql-permissions` statements.
- cql-triggers statements.

All the statements are listed below and are described in the rest of this documentation (see links above):

.. code-block:: cql

   cql_statement: `statement` [ ';' ]
   statement: `ddl_statement`
            : | `dml_statement`
            : | `secondary_index_statement`
            : | `materialized_view_statement`
            : | `role_or_permission_statement`
            : | `udf_statement`
            : | `udt_statement`
            : | `trigger_statement`
   ddl_statement: `use_statement`
                : | `create_keyspace_statement`
                : | `alter_keyspace_statement`
                : | `drop_keyspace_statement`
                : | `create_table_statement`
                : | `alter_table_statement`
                : | `drop_table_statement`
                : | `truncate_statement`
    dml_statement: `select_statement`
                 : | `insert_statement`
                 : | `update_statement`
                 : | `delete_statement`
                 : | `batch_statement`
    trigger_statement: `create_trigger_statement`
                     : | `drop_trigger_statement`

.. _prepared-statements:

Prepared Statements
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

CQL supports *prepared statements*. Prepared statements are an optimization that allows parsing a query only once but
executes it multiple times with different concrete values.

Any statement that uses at least one bind marker (see :token:`bind_marker`) will need to be *prepared*. After which, the statement
can be *executed* by provided concrete values for each of its markers. The exact details of how a statement is prepared
and then executed depends on the CQL driver used, and you should refer to your driver documentation.


.. include:: /rst_include/apache-copyrights-index.rst
.. include:: /rst_include/apache-cql-return-index.rst