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Posted to commits@hbase.apache.org by dm...@apache.org on 2012/04/09 22:17:04 UTC
svn commit: r1311411 - /hbase/trunk/src/docbkx/case_studies.xml
Author: dmeil
Date: Mon Apr 9 20:17:04 2012
New Revision: 1311411
URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=1311411&view=rev
Log:
hbase-5753.xml - adding schema design case study in Case Studies chapter
Modified:
hbase/trunk/src/docbkx/case_studies.xml
Modified: hbase/trunk/src/docbkx/case_studies.xml
URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/hbase/trunk/src/docbkx/case_studies.xml?rev=1311411&r1=1311410&r2=1311411&view=diff
==============================================================================
--- hbase/trunk/src/docbkx/case_studies.xml (original)
+++ hbase/trunk/src/docbkx/case_studies.xml Mon Apr 9 20:17:04 2012
@@ -34,6 +34,149 @@
<para>For more information on Performance and Troubleshooting, see <xref linkend="performance"/> and <xref linkend="trouble"/>.
</para>
</section>
+
+ <section xml:id="casestudies.schema">
+ <title>Schema Design</title>
+
+ <section xml:id="casestudies.schema.listdata">
+ <title>List Data</title>
+ <para>The following is an exchange from the user dist-list regarding a fairly common question:
+ how to handle per-user list data in HBase.
+ </para>
+ <para>*** QUESTION ***</para>
+ <para>
+ We're looking at how to store a large amount of (per-user) list data in
+HBase, and we were trying to figure out what kind of access pattern made
+the most sense. One option is store the majority of the data in a key, so
+we could have something like:
+ </para>
+
+ <programlisting>
+<FixedWidthUserName><FixedWidthValueId1>:"" (no value)
+<FixedWidthUserName><FixedWidthValueId2>:"" (no value)
+<FixedWidthUserName><FixedWidthValueId3>:"" (no value)
+ </programlisting>
+
+The other option we had was to do this entirely using:
+ <programlisting>
+<FixedWidthUserName><FixedWidthPageNum0>:<FixedWidthLength><FixedIdNextPageNum><ValueId1><ValueId2><ValueId3>...
+<FixedWidthUserName><FixedWidthPageNum1>:<FixedWidthLength><FixedIdNextPageNum><ValueId1><ValueId2><ValueId3>...
+ </programlisting>
+ <para>
+where each row would contain multiple values.
+So in one case reading the first thirty values would be:
+ </para>
+ <programlisting>
+scan { STARTROW => 'FixedWidthUsername' LIMIT => 30}
+ </programlisting>
+And in the second case it would be
+ <programlisting>
+get 'FixedWidthUserName\x00\x00\x00\x00'
+ </programlisting>
+ <para>
+The general usage pattern would be to read only the first 30 values of
+these lists, with infrequent access reading deeper into the lists. Some
+users would have <= 30 total values in these lists, and some users would
+have millions (i.e. power-law distribution)
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ The single-value format seems like it would take up more space on HBase,
+but would offer some improved retrieval / pagination flexibility. Would
+there be any significant performance advantages to be able to paginate via
+gets vs paginating with scans?
+ </para>
+ <para>
+ My initial understanding was that doing a scan should be faster if our
+paging size is unknown (and caching is set appropriately), but that gets
+should be faster if we'll always need the same page size. I've ended up
+hearing different people tell me opposite things about performance. I
+assume the page sizes would be relatively consistent, so for most use cases
+we could guarantee that we only wanted one page of data in the
+fixed-page-length case. I would also assume that we would have infrequent
+updates, but may have inserts into the middle of these lists (meaning we'd
+need to update all subsequent rows).
+ </para>
+ <para>
+Thanks for help / suggestions / follow-up questions.
+ </para>
+ <para>*** ANSWER ***</para>
+ <para>
+If I understand you correctly, you're ultimately trying to store
+triples in the form "user, valueid, value", right? E.g., something
+like:
+ </para>
+ <programlisting>
+"user123, firstname, Paul",
+"user234, lastname, Smith"
+ </programlisting>
+ <para>
+(But the usernames are fixed width, and the valueids are fixed width).
+ </para>
+ <para>
+And, your access pattern is along the lines of: "for user X, list the
+next 30 values, starting with valueid Y". Is that right? And these
+values should be returned sorted by valueid?
+ </para>
+ <para>
+The tl;dr version is that you should probably go with one row per
+user+value, and not build a complicated intra-row pagination scheme on
+your own unless you're really sure it is needed.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+Your two options mirror a common question people have when designing
+HBase schemas: should I go "tall" or "wide"? Your first schema is
+"tall": each row represents one value for one user, and so there are
+many rows in the table for each user; the row key is user + valueid,
+and there would be (presumably) a single column qualifier that means
+"the value". This is great if you want to scan over rows in sorted
+order by row key (thus my question above, about whether these ids are
+sorted correctly). You can start a scan at any user+valueid, read the
+next 30, and be done. What you're giving up is the ability to have
+transactional guarantees around all the rows for one user, but it
+doesn't sound like you need that. Doing it this way is generally
+recommended (see
+here <link xlink:href="http://hbase.apache.org/book.html#schema.smackdown">http://hbase.apache.org/book.html#schema.smackdown</link>).
+ </para>
+ <para>
+Your second option is "wide": you store a bunch of values in one row,
+using different qualifiers (where the qualifier is the valueid). The
+simple way to do that would be to just store ALL values for one user
+in a single row. I'm guessing you jumped to the "paginated" version
+because you're assuming that storing millions of columns in a single
+row would be bad for performance, which may or may not be true; as
+long as you're not trying to do too much in a single request, or do
+things like scanning over and returning all of the cells in the row,
+it shouldn't be fundamentally worse. The client has methods that allow
+you to get specific slices of columns.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+Note that neither case fundamentally uses more disk space than the
+other; you're just "shifting" part of the identifying information for
+a value either to the left (into the row key, in option one) or to the
+right (into the column qualifiers in option 2). Under the covers,
+every key/value still stores the whole row key, and column family
+name. (If this is a bit confusing, take an hour and watch Lars
+George's excellent video about understanding HBase schema design:
+<link xlink:href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HLoH_PgrLk)">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HLoH_PgrLk)</link>.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+A manually paginated version has lots more complexities, as you note,
+like having to keep track of how many things are in each page,
+re-shuffling if new values are inserted, etc. That seems significantly
+more complex. It might have some slight speed advantages (or
+disadvantages!) at extremely high throughput, and the only way to
+really know that would be to try it out. If you don't have time to
+build it both ways and compare, my advice would be to start with the
+simplest option (one row per user+value). Start simple and iterate! :)
+ </para>
+
+ </section> <!-- listdata -->
+
+
+ </section> <!-- schema design -->
+
+ <section xml:id="casestudies.perftroub">
+ <title>Performance/Troubleshooting</title>
<section xml:id="casestudies.slownode">
<title>Case Study #1 (Performance Issue On A Single Node)</title>
@@ -175,5 +318,7 @@ Link detected: yes
<para>See also <xref linkend="dfs.datanode.max.xcievers"/>.
</para>
</section>
+
+ </section> <!-- performance/troubleshooting -->
</chapter>