Learning Apache Cassandra - Second Edition

Appending and prepending values to lists

Our observation allows us to deduce that Cassandra appends items to list columns by creating a new cell whose name includes the current timestamp UUID. Since the value of timestamp UUIDs is monotonically increasing, this will ensure that the appended value is the last in the list, since it has the highest (newest) UUID. This way, Cassandra can construct the cell name for a newly appended list item without consulting the current contents of the list.

Now, let's take a look at the first cell in the list, the one whose value contains dave. Recall that we prepended dave onto the list, so we know that the cell name doesn't contain the current timestamp because that would put Dave at the end of the list, ...