title: Cassandra store timestamps as strings
body: <p>I know that Cassandra has a timestamp data type. I'm using it but I'm having some troubles with it (time zones in particular). My question is, which are (if they exist) the drawbacks of using a string where to store '2014-05-09 14:12:00' instead of the timestamp type? </p>
  
  <p>I already tried using the operators >, >=, &lt;=, &lt; and everything works fine.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you</p>