How to define dynamic column families in cassandra

Question

Here it is said, that no special effort is need to get a dynamic column family. But I always get an exception, when I try to set a value for an undefined column.

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Answer 1

CQL3 requires column metadata to exist. CQL3 is actually an abstraction over the underlying storage rows, so it's not a one-to-one. If you want to use dynamic column names (and there are lots of excellent use cases for them), use the traditional Thrift interface (via the client library of your choice). This will give you full control over what gets stored.

Answer 2

CQL3 supports dynamic column family but you have to alter the table schema first

ALTER TABLE places ADD website varchar;

Check out the 1.2 documentation and CQL in depth slides