Introduction to CQLSH

Now that we are through with the Cassandra setup, let's get acquainted with the shell and a few basic commands:

1. Run CQL at /usr/local/Cassandra/apache-cassandra-1.1.6 using bin/cqlsh with a host and port:

   bin/cqlsh  –host <ip-adress> -p <port number>
   

2. Create a keyspace either at the Cassandra client or at CQL, as follows:

   create keyspace <keyspace_name>; 
   

3. Create a column family at the Cassandra client or at CQL as follows:

   use <keyspace_name>;
   create column family <columnfamily name>;
   

   For example, create the following table:

   CREATE TABLE appUSers (
     user_name varchar,
     Dept varchar,
     email varchar,
     PRIMARY KEY (user_name));
   

4. Insert a few records into the column family from the command line:

   INSERT INTO appUSers (user_name, Dept, email)
     VALUES ('shilpi', 'bigdata, '[e-mail]');
   

5. Retrieve the data from the column family:

   SELECT * FROM appUSers LIMIT 10;