Chapter 8. HBase and Schema Design

Table of Contents

8.1. Schema Creation
8.2. On the number of column families
8.3. Monotonically Increasing Row Keys/Timeseries Data
8.4. Try to minimize row and column sizes
8.5. Number of Versions

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.

8.1.  Schema Creation

HBase schemas can be created or updated with Chapter 4, The HBase Shell or by using HBaseAdmin in the Java API.