sometimes more than 1 value stored, even though VERSIONS is 1

[Ferdy Galema]

Using Hbase 0.20.5 with Hadoop CDH2 0.20.1+169.89 I noticed something 
very strange.

When overwriting a certain column in a column family with 1 VERSIONS, 
and removing that value later (for example after several minutes) the 
older value still shows when listing all the KeyValues of the row. 
Although it has the previous value and timestamp, I wasn't expecting a 
value at all since my column family definition says VERSIONS is 1. 
Deleting the column with or without timestamp does not make a difference.

Perhaps the previous value was restored because there had not been a 
compaction yet? So that ONLY after the compaction the previous value is 
truely gone?

Is it by design or bug? If it is by design, I would certainly recommend 
exposing this fact by somehow explaining that VERSIONS is the "minimum" 
number of versions that will be stored; in some cases there are more 
versions.

Ferdy.