Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Let's provide the table definition and explain how and why we will use the HBase
elements. Since we have already introduced the convenient SQL way of dealing with
HBase using project Phoenix, we will continue to do so from this chapter onward.
A solution for storing user information
Unlike Cassandra, HBase does not have the concept of a keyspace, database, or
schema in the
relational database management system
(
RDBMS
) sense of the word.
Therefore, all the table names have to be unique. This is not a big limitation because
you can use compound table names, for example,
sujee_users
. For simplicity, we
can just create the
users
table.
However, with Phoenix, we are back to having what amounts to the database/
schema in RDBMS and keyspace in Cassandra. How so? Since Phoenix stores all of
the table's metadata in the table itself, it can reintroduce the keyspace. Thus, we can
define our table as
my_schema.my_table
.
In our case, we will be defining
my_schema.users
.
