Chapter 7. HBase and Schema Design

Table of Contents

7.1. Schema Creation
7.2. On the number of column families
7.3. Monotonically Increasing Row Keys/Timeseries Data
7.4. Try to minimize row and column sizes
7.5. Table Creation: Pre-Creating Regions

A good general introduction on the strength and weaknesses modelling on the various non-rdbms datastores is Ian Varleys' Master thesis, No Relation: The Mixed Blessings of Non-Relational Databases. Recommended.

7.1.  Schema Creation

HBase schemas can be created or updated through the HBase shell or by using HBaseAdmin in the Java API.