title: Can cassandra compaction strategy be changed dynamically?
body: <p>I am quite new to using Cassandra and have a basic question that I was seeking an answer to. I am using the default compaction strategy which the Size-Tiered. I am aware that this can be changed to the Levelled Compaction strategy by running a command like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ALTER TABLE users WITH
  compaction = { 'class' :  'LeveledCompactionStrategy'  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am however unsure if this change takes into effect at runtime on a particular keyspace, or if I would need to restart the node for the changes to take effect. I read in the Datastax documentation (<a href="http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cassandra/1.2/cassandra/configuration/configCassandra_yaml_r.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cassandra/1.2/cassandra/configuration/configCassandra_yaml_r.html</a>) that changes to global configurations in the cassandra.yaml file only takes effect after a node is restarted and would like to know if the same applies for the keyspace specific properties like compaction strategy as well.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for your help.</p>