Learning Apache Cassandra - Second Edition

Other list operations

We've seen that the structure of maps and sets allows Cassandra to perform all supported mutation operations on those collection types without having to read the currently stored values. Unfortunately, the same is not true for lists. While appending and prepending to lists can be done discretely, other operations require scanning the existing contents of the list first.

If we take a moment to ponder the underlying representation of list columns, the reason is clear. If, for instance, we ask to remove the value dave from the list, there's no way for Cassandra to know which cell(s) contain that value without reading it. Even in the simpler case of deleting an element at a given position, Cassandra must look at the cell ...