Can DDL be dumped using pycassaShell before creating column family?

Question

PycassaShell uses SYSTEM_MANAGER.create_column_family() to create column families in Cassandra.

Is there a way to dump the DDL before making the commit in Cassandra? Do I have to modify pycassaShell internals?

Answer 1

Pycassa is using a Thrift RPC call to create the column family, so there's not really a DDL statement being used (because it's not using a query language). If you're talking about dumping the CfDef object, yes, you would need to modify the internals to make that happen, but it's worth noting that the CfDef will have some ignored fields and most of the fields will have their default value populated server-side after the RPC call is made.