Cassandra 3.9?

[PaulRB]

All, I have installed the drivers from here so that I can read from Cassandra version 2.1 databases. This works, but not well enough for my use case. Unfortunately, I need more! I need to:

1. read from Cassandra version 3.9 databases
2. read List type data
3. write to version 3.9 databases, including List data types

Is anyone aware of any solutions for the above?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[KevinP]

@PaulRB Alteryx has only tested connections to Cassandra 2.4.x. However, the Simba Driver we support does support connections to Cassandra 2.x and 3.x so it is theoretically possible to connect to Cassandra 3.9 for both read and write. We just haven't tested it to confirm, and can't provide any feedback on specific driver settings that might be required. Regarding List data types our help documentation specifically states that Map, List, and Set data types are not supported. For additional information please see the Cassandra documentation in our online help.

https://help.alteryx.com/11.5/index.htm#DataSources/Cassandra.htm

[PaulRB]

Thanks for the reply, Kevin.

I should have said this before, but I already tested the driver by attempting to connect and perform a query on 3 Cassandra databases in my organisation. Two of the 3 databases are Cassandra v2.1 and the third is Cassandra v3.9. I found that the driver would not connect to the Cassandra 3.9 database, but it would connect OK to the Cassandra 2.1 databases and run a query. My assumption was that the failure to connect was because the database was 3.9, and the driver works only up to 2.1. But this is only an assumption! 

If anyone in this Community can confirm that they have used these drivers to connect to a v3.9 database, then I can contact the DBAs in my organisation and ask them to investigate why I have been unable to connect. (I know I have the correct connection parameters, because I can connect and query the v3.9 database using DBeaver.) But otherwise, the DBAs' assumption is that the failure to connect is because the driver provided by Alteryx is not compatible with 3.9.

I did read on the driver download page that lists, maps etc. were not supported. I suppose I was hoping that the data in those kinds of fields would be represented in some raw way which I could get my Alteryx flow to interpret, albeit with some difficulty. But I found that these fields are missing the important data when I run the query in Alteryx. When I run the query in DBeaver, I can see that there is important data in the list/map fields, data which I need.

So please don't interpret my query as a criticism of what Alteryx has provided for free. It does exactly what it says on the tin! But I was hoping for advice from the Community on alternative drivers from other providers which would meet my needs.

For example, when run in Alteryx, one field in the results is shown as:

[·,·,··]

But the same field contains the following data when the query is run in DBeaver:

[{gtin_number:'2040612',subst_type_code:5100,locations:[{seq_number:506,subs_type:0,loc_id:1,zone:'N',aisle:'20',section:'48',loc_type:'SALESFLOOR',sec_id:3008,mod_seq_no:20005,route_pos:43}]}]

I assume this field is a list type, or one of the other non-supported types. I need to get this data into my Alteryx flow.

[Arrow]

This is also an issue for us. cannot upgrade cassandra to a higher version then 2.2, after that reading or inserting data is giving errors in alteryx (CQL language seems to have changed since then).

Cassandra is way beyond version 2.2 (3.0 released November 11, 2015 already !!) 

when will alteryx support latest version?

[KevinP · Accepted solution]

@PaulRB There are multiple other ODBC driver providers for Cassandra that you could try. We haven't tested any of them though and can't say if they do or do not work appropriately. In most cases they should work, but you may need to create a custom lua file to properly interpret the data types. There is documentation on creating custom lua scripts along with some examples included with the installation of Designer. These can typically be found at C:\Program Files\Alteryx\bin\RuntimeData\ODBC

@Arrow I understand your concern, but I don't have any insight into the road map to confirm if Cassandra 3.9 support is even on it let alone when it would be available. The best thing I can recommend is to post a detailed a detailed use case to the Product Ideas section of Community asking that support for it be added. 

[Bharath]

I am getting following error, while connecting from Alteryx to Cassandra 

"SQLSTATE: HY000[SIMBA][CassandraODBC] (100) failed to connect to Cassandra database: 50331649"

my Cassandra version is 3.0.11.1564 and my simba Cassandra ODBC driver version is 2.5.5 

since my simba Cassandra ODBC driver version < cassandra version, I am getting this error ? or is it possible to get latest version of cassandra ODBC Driver from Alteryx ? so didn't update the driver version yet ?