Hello,
Can you please tell me if this is the proper way of designing a table that's
got an auto increment key? If there's a better way please let me know that
as well.
After reading the mail archives, I learned that the best way is to use the
'incrementColumnValue' method of HTable.
So hypothetically speaking let's say I have to create a "User -> Orders"
relationship. Every time user creates an order we will assign a system
generated (auto increment) id as primary key for the order.
I am thinking I could do this:
1) Create a table of Ids for various objects such as "Order". It will have
just a single row with key "1" and column families for various objects.
When it's time to add a new order for a user I can do something like this:
HTable tableIds = new HTable("IDs");
Get get = new Get(Bytes.toBytes("1"));
Result result = tableIds.get(get);
long newOrderId = tableIds.incrementColumnValue(result.getRow(), "orders",
"orderId", 1);
// In future I could use the same table for other objects as follows
// long newInvoiceId = tableIds.incrementColumnValue(result.getRow(),
"invoices", "invoiceId", 1);
2) Once the newOrderId is retrieved I can add the info about order to
UserOrder table with a key of format: userId + "*" + newOrderId. The
"info" family of this table will have columns such as "orderAmount" ,
"orderDate" etc.
As per the documentation, the 'incrementColumnValue' is done in exclusive
and serial fashion for each row with a rowlock. In other words, even in
multi-threading environment we are guaranteed to get a unique key per
thread, correct?
Is this a correct/good design for a table that needs auto increment key?
Please let me know. Thanks.
