I'd recommend Thrift.
> Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 14:08:52 -0500
> Subject: CQL or Thrift ?
> From: nulik...@gmail.com
> To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
>
> Hi,
> I need a client in C (not C++) to work with Cassandra, so since there
> is no one yet I would do my own. So far I have checked, I can do it
> through Thrift RPC port, or through CQL port. As I understand, CQL
> doesn't support direct "mutate" or "get_range_slices" calls like
> Thrift does , so being Thrift API more low level, it should be faster
> for specific queries my application would execute. The question is,
> what do you recommend me to use, Thrift or CQL3 native protocol?
> Thrift API supports CQL , but not the other way around. If commands
> go through CQL, there will be some Java code executed and I don't know
> which would be faster, sending the raw "mutate"s through thrift by C
> application or executing a prepared CQL3 query by Java? I am
> interested more in performance, rather than in easiness of use. Will
> appreciate very much your comments.
>
> Nulik
