I have a feature request: There should be a native function called 'count', that produces count of rows based on specific family filter, that is internal to HBASE and won't be required to read CELLs off the disk/cache. Just count up the rows in the most efficient way possible. I realize that family definitions are part of the cells, so it would be nice to have an index that somehow can produce low IO/CPU hit to hbase when doing a count (for example enabling an index like that in table schema would be how you turn it on for a specific family).
Best, -Jack
