TL;DR: Collections (part of CQL3) not available yet in DSE 3.0.x
Also worth noting, but unrelated to my issue:
Even in Datastax community edition - one needs to activate CQL3. The documentation says it should be activated by default in cqlsh
http://www.datastax.com/docs/1.2/cql_cli/using_cql
"Activating CQL 3 You activate the CQL mode in one of these ways:
- Use the DataStax Java Driver to activate CQL through the
- native/binary protocol. Start cqlsh, a Python-based command-line client.
- Use the set_sql_version Thrift method.
- Specify the desired CQL mode in the connect() call to the Python driver: *connection = cql.connect('localhost:9160', cql_version='3.0')*
The documentation there was incorrect also, should be
con = cql.connect('localhost', cql_version='3.0.0')
Also, Enterprise Opcenter doesn't yet support CQL 3 in DSE.
cqlsh --cqlversion=3