apache/cassandra · error · InvalidRequestException

Partition deletion is not supported by table

Error message

Partition deletion is not supported by table %s

What it means

AbstractMutableLazyVirtualTable lets concrete virtual tables opt into which mutations they support. The default applyPartitionDeletion implementation throws this invalid-request error because the table did not override it, meaning DELETE of entire partitions is not supported by that virtual table.

Solutions

  1. Delete individual rows instead of the whole partition (row deletion may be supported).
  2. Use SELECT filtering rather than deleting; virtual tables are views over runtime state and often cannot be mutated.
  3. If you own the virtual table implementation, override applyPartitionDeletion to implement the deletion.
  4. Stop/adjust the underlying state that the partition reflects (e.g. reset the metric or operation) instead of deleting rows.
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

try {
    session.execute("DELETE FROM system_views.some_table WHERE pk = ?", pk);
} catch (InvalidQueryException e) {
    if (e.getMessage().contains("Partition deletion is not supported")) {
        // fall back to row-level deletes or manage underlying state instead
    }
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Executing 'DELETE FROM <virtual_table> WHERE <full partition key>' (or an equivalent mutation via the driver) against a virtual table whose implementation does not override applyPartitionDeletion(Object[]).

Common situations: Users treating system virtual tables (system_views.*, etc.) like normal tables and issuing full-partition DELETEs; cleanup scripts attempting to purge virtual-table rows by partition.

Understand the failure class

Background: UnsupportedOperationException and "is not supported" errors: when a library deliberately refuses a call — this error's family across 30 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of apache/cassandra@88fd0f6a0e (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/206584dbd1389fe1. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/java/org/apache/cassandra/db/virtual/AbstractMutableLazyVirtualTable.java:60

 * modification via INSERT/UPDATE, DELETE and TRUNCATE operations.
 * 
 * Virtual table implementation need to be thread-safe has they can be called from different threads.
 */
public abstract class AbstractMutableLazyVirtualTable extends AbstractLazyVirtualTable
{
    protected AbstractMutableLazyVirtualTable(TableMetadata metadata, OnTimeout onTimeout, Sorted sorted)
    {
        super(metadata, onTimeout, sorted);
    }

    protected AbstractMutableLazyVirtualTable(TableMetadata metadata, OnTimeout onTimeout, Sorted sorted, Sorted sortedByPartitionKey)
    {
        super(metadata, onTimeout, sorted, sortedByPartitionKey);
    }

    protected void applyPartitionDeletion(Object[] partitionKeys)
    {
        throw invalidRequest("Partition deletion is not supported by table %s", metadata());
    }

    protected void applyRangeTombstone(Object[] partitionKey, Object[] start, boolean startInclusive, Object[] end, boolean endInclusive)
    {
        throw invalidRequest("Range deletion is not supported by table %s", metadata());
    }

    protected void applyRowDeletion(Object[] partitionKey, @Nullable Object[] clusteringKeys)
    {
        throw invalidRequest("Row deletion is not supported by table %s", metadata());
    }

    protected void applyRowUpdate(Object[] partitionKeys, @Nullable Object[] clusteringKeys, ColumnMetadata[] columns, Object[] values)
    {
        throw invalidRequest("Column modification is not supported by table %s", metadata());
    }

    private void applyRangeTombstone(Object[] pks, RangeTombstone rt)

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