Cassandra 0.7 Can Pack 2 Billion Columns Into a Row

angry tapir writes "The cadre of volunteer developers behind the Cassandra distributed database have released the latest version of their open source software, able to hold up to 2 billion columns per row. The newly installed Large Row Support feature of Cassandra version 0.7 allows the database to hold up to 2 billion columns per row. Previous versions had no set upper limit, though the maximum amount of material that could be held in a single row was approximately 2GB. This upper limit has been eliminated."

Comments

Re:Typical applications?

[Brummund]

Any application developed by one or more Visual Basic developers, given enough time.

Re:Only 2 billion?

[Anonymous Coward]

You work for Gillette, don't you.

Re:Typical applications?

[gratuitous_arp]

Apparently the extra columns can be used to the effect of doing "more" than store data. A link in the article explains how lots of extra columns can be useful for querying data (Casandra doesn't use SQL). http://maxgrinev.com/2010/07/12/do-you-really-need-sql-to-do-it-all-in-cassandra/

So the primary reason for this doesn't seem to be that one's run-of-the-mill database needs more columns.

for those that absolutely positively cannot RTFA

[Son of Byrne]

Cassandra appears to be a multi-dimensional datastore that does not store data in the same fashion as a typical RDBMS. It uses columns and rows both to store sets of data uniquely. If you're familiar with Big Table, then, apparently, its kinda like that.

That just means that they've added even more storage vectors to it than before...not sure why it made slashdot front page...

Re:If you have more than 30 columns

[ogrisel]

Not with column store databases such as Cassandra, HBase and BigTable.

Re:Typical applications?

[jrumney]

What sorta applications need so many columns?

Facebook needs one column for every privacy violation.

Cassandra

[tverbeek]

I predict that bad things will come of this.

Not that anyone will believe me.