Using HBase Hive integration

After you have configured HBase Hive integration, you can create an HBase table from Hive, and access that table from HBase.

From the Hive shell, create an HBase table:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE hbase_hive_table (key int, value string) 
STORED BY 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.hbase.HBaseStorageHandler'
WITH SERDEPROPERTIES ("hbase.columns.mapping" = ":key,cf1:val")
TBLPROPERTIES ("hbase.table.name" = "hbase_hive_table", "hbase.mapred.output.outputtable" = "hbase_hive_table");

The hbase.columns.mapping property is mandatory. The hbase.table.name property is optional. The hbase.mapred.output.outputtable property is optional; it is needed, if you plan to insert data to the table.

From the HBase shell, access the hbase_hive_table:

$ hbase shell
hbase(main):001:0> list 'hbase_hive_table'                                                                                                          1 row(s) in 0.0530 seconds
hbase(main):002:0> describe 'hbase_hive_table'
Table hbase_hive_table is ENABLED
hbase_hive_table COLUMN FAMILIES DESCRIPTION{NAME => 'cf', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING => 'NONE', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', REPLICATION_SCOPE => '0', VERSIONS => '1', COMPRESSION => 'NONE', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', TTL => 'FOREVER', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', IN_MEMORY => 'false', BLOCKCACHE => 'true'} 1 row(s) in 0.2860 seconds
 
hbase(main):003:0> scan 'hbase_hive_table'
ROW           COLUMN+CELL                                                                      
0 row(s) in 0.0060 seconds

Insert the data into the HBase table through Hive:

INSERT OVERWRITE TABLE HBASE_HIVE_TABLE values (98, 'val_98');

From the HBase shell, verify that the data got loaded:

hbase(main):009:0> scan "hbase_hive_table"
ROW                        COLUMN+CELL                                                                      
 98                        column=cf1:val, timestamp=1267737987733, value=val_98                            
1 row(s) in 0.0110 seconds

From Hive, query the HBase data to view the data that is inserted in the hbase_hive_table:

hive> select * from HBASE_HIVE_TABLE;
Total MapReduce jobs = 1
Launching Job 1 out of 1
...
OK
98	val_98
Time taken: 4.582 seconds

Use the following steps to access the existing HBase table through Hive.

You can access the existing HBase table through Hive using the CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE hbase_table_2(key int, value string) 
STORED BY 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.hbase.HBaseStorageHandler' WITH SERDEPROPERTIES 
("hbase.columns.mapping" = ":key,cf1:val")
TBLPROPERTIES("hbase.table.name" = "some_existing_table", 
"hbase.mapred.output.outputtable" = "some_existing_table");

You can use different type of column mapping to map the HBase columns to Hive:
- Multiple Columns and Families To define four columns, the first being the rowkey: “:key,cf:a,cf:b,cf:c”
- Hive MAP to HBase Column Family When the Hive data type is a Map, a column family with no qualifier might be used. This will use the keys of the Map as the column qualifier in HBase: “cf:”
- Hive MAP to HBase Column Prefix When the Hive data type is a Map, a prefix for the column qualifier can be provided which will be prepended to the Map keys: “cf:prefix_.*”
  note
  The prefix is removed from the column qualifier as compared to the key in the Hive Map. For example, for the above column mapping, a column of “cf:prefix_a” would result in a key in the Map of “a”.
You can also define composite row keys. Composite row keys use multiple Hive columns to generate the HBase row key.
- Simple Composite Row Keys. A Hive column with a datatype of Struct will automatically concatenate all elements in the struct with the termination character specified in the DDL.
- Complex Composite Row Keys and HBaseKeyFactory Custom logic can be implemented by writing Java code to implement a KeyFactory and provide it to the DDL using the table property key “hbase.composite.key.factory”.