What is the fastest way to get data into Cassandra 2 from a Java application?

Question

I have tried the DataStax Java driver and it seems the fastest way to insert data is to compose a CQL string with all parameters inline.

This loop takes 2500ms or so on my test cluster:

PreparedStatement ps = session.prepare("INSERT INTO perf_test.wibble (id, info) VALUES (?, ?)")
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) session.execute(ps.bind("" + i, "aa" + i));

The same loop with the parameters inline is about 1300ms. It gets worse if there are many parameters. I know I can use batching to insert all the rows at once but thats not the purpose of this test. I also tried using session.execute(cql, params) and it is faster but still doesn't match inline values.

Composing CQL strings is certainly convenient and simple but is there a much faster way?

Answer 1

You can do two things to improve performance. First is to use the executeAsynch function in the driver instead of execute.

Second thing is to use a batch statement instead of a loop (I know you mentioned it's not the purpose of the test, but when it comes to inserts with a loop, batching is what you want).

PreparedStatement ps = session.prepare("INSERT INTO messages (user_id, msg_id, title, body) " +
                                       "VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?)");
BatchStatement batch = new BatchStatement();
batch.add(ps.bind(uid, mid1, title1, body1));
batch.add(ps.bind(uid, mid2, title2, body2));
batch.add(ps.bind(uid, mid3, title3, body3));
session.execute(batch);