Retrieving data with dynamic attributes in Cassandra - cassandra-2.1

Question

I'm working on a solution for Cassandra that's proving impossible.
We have a table that will return a set of candidates given some search criteria. The row with the highest score is returned back to the user. We can do this quite easily with SQL, but there's a need to migrate to Cassandra. Here are the tables involved:
Value
ID | VALUE | COUNTRY | STATE | CITY | COUNTY
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
1 | 50 | US | | |
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
2 | 25 | | TX | |
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
3 | 15 | | | MEMPHIS |
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
4 | 5 | | | | BROWARD
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
5 | 30 | | NY | NYC |
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
6 | 20 | US | | NASHVILLE |
--------+---------+----------+----------+-----------+-----------
Scoring
ATTRIBUTE | SCORE
-------------+-------------
COUNTRY | 1
STATE | 2
CITY | 4
COUNTY | 8
A query is sent that can have any of those four attributes populated or not. We search through our values table, calculate the scores, and return the highest one. If a column in the values table is null, it means it's applicable for all.
ID 1 is applicable for all states, cities, and counties within the US.
ID 2 is applicable for all countries, cities, and counties where the state is TX.
Example:
Query: {Country: US, State: TX}
Matches Value IDs: [1, 2, 3, 4, 6]
Scores: [1, 2, 4, 8, 5(1+4)]
Result: {id: 4} (8 was the highest score so Broward returns)
How would you model something like this in Cassandra 2.1?

Answer 1

Found out the best way to achieve this was using Solr with Cassandra.
Somethings to note though about using Solr, since all the resources I needed were scattered amongst the internet.
You must first start Cassandra with Solr. There's a command with the dse tool for starting cassandra with Solr enabled.
$CASSANDRA_HOME/bin/dse cassandra -s
You must create your keyspace with network topology stategy and solr enabled.
CREATE KEYSPACE ... WITH REPLICATION = {'class': 'NetworkTopologyStrategy', 'Solr': 1}
Once you create your table within your solr enabled keyspace, create a core using the dsetool.
$CASSANDRA_HOME/bin/dsetool create_core keyspace.table_name generateResources=true reindex=true
This will allow solr to index your data and generate a number of secondary indexes against your cassandra table.
To perform the queries needed for columns where values may or may not exist requires a somewhat complex query.
SELECT * FROM keyspace.table_name WHERE solr_query = '{"q": "{(-column:[* TO *] AND *:*) OR column:value}"';
Finally, you may notice when searching for text, your solr query column:"Hello" may pick up other unwanted values like HelloWorld or HelloThere. This is due to the datatype used in your schema.xml for Solr. Here's how to modify this behavior:
Head to your Solr Admin UI. (Normally http://hostname:8983/solr/)
Choose your core in the drop down list in the left pane, should be named keyspace.table_name.
Look for Config or Schema, both should take you to the schema.xml.
Copy and paste that file to some text editor. Optionally, you could try using wget or curl to download the file, but you need the real link which is provided in the text field box to the top right.
There's a tag <fieldtype>, with the name TextField. Replace org.apache.solr.schema.TextField with org.apache.solr.schema.StrField. You must also remove the analyzers, StrField does not support those.
That's it, hopefully I've saved people from all the headaches I encountered.