Introduction - Data Storage for Social Networks: A Socially Aware Approach - page 9

A column value is a pair of name-value associated with a timestamp; e.g., using
the Java Script Object Notation (JSON) representation, we can have a column named
“Name,”
{
name: "Name",
value: "Duc A. Tran",
timestamp: 123456789
}
and a column named “Address,”
{
name: "Address",
value: "100 Morrissey Blvd",
timestamp: 125555555
}
A column is the smallest increment of data and is identified by its name. A column
family is simply a set of rows, each composed of an arbitrary number of columns.
For example, we can have a column family named “User Profile” below:
UserProfile = {
name: "User Profile",
User1: {
Name: {
name: "Name",
value: "Duc A. Tran",
timestamp: 123456789
},
Genre: {
name: "Genre",
value: "M",
timestamp: 123456789
},
Address: {
name: "Address",
value: "100 Morrissey Blvd",
timestamp: 125555555
},
Phone: {
name: "Phone",
value: "617-287-6452",
timestamp: 123456789
}
},
User2: {
Name: {