Structure of Bigtable data
Every row in Bigtable is indexed by a single row key. Row keys are arbitrary byte strings that may be up to 64 KB, though should generally be limited to under 1 KB for performance and cost. Bigtable persists rows in a sorted order by these row keys, making it possible to retrieve several related rows quickly as a single, contiguous scan over the row key.
Each row may contain thousands of columns, and there are no uniformity constraints on columns between rows of the same table. In order to provide very high performant data retrieval operations, Bigtable only scans the row key when performing lookups. This means that the actual values of the columns are never directly referenced. As a result of this, the only way ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access