Database Reference
In-Depth Information
HBase
Enter HBase, which has the following characteristics:
No real indexes
Rows are stored sequentially, as are the columns within each row. Therefore, no issues
with index bloat, and insert performance is independent of table size.
Automatic partitioning
As your tables grow, they will automatically be split into regions and distributed across
all available nodes.
Scale linearly and automatically with new nodes
Add a node, point it to the existing cluster, and run the regionserver. Regions will auto-
matically rebalance, and load will spread evenly.
Commodity hardware
Clusters are built on $1,000-$5,000 nodes rather than $50,000 nodes. RDBMSs are I/O
hungry, requiring more costly hardware.
Fault tolerance
Lots of nodes means each is relatively insignificant. No need to worry about individual
node downtime.
Batch processing
MapReduce integration allows fully parallel, distributed jobs against your data with
locality awareness.
If you stay up at night worrying about your database (uptime, scale, or speed), you should
seriously consider making a jump from the RDBMS world to HBase. Use a solution that
was intended to scale rather than a solution based on stripping down and throwing money
at what used to work. With HBase, the software is free, the hardware is cheap, and the dis-
tribution is intrinsic.
