Ian, You still want to stick to your relational modeling. :-(
You need to play around more with hierarchical models to get a better appreciation. If you model as if you're working with a RDBMS then you will end up with a poor HBase table design. In ERD models, you don't have the concept of a weak relationship. The weak relationship is that the model has no relationship between the entities. Its the application that manages that. Imagine a reference or look up table that in the model has no association. Using our example of an Order Entry system, its the application that hits the customer lookup table to capture relevant information for the order. That's why I refer to it as a weak association. On Jul 5, 2013, at 6:00 PM, Ian Varley <[email protected]> wrote: > Sure. Maybe it's useful to talk about the functional aspect of relationships > in models. In an RDBMS, explicit relationship play a couple roles: > > - foreign key constraints: don't allow a tuple in relation A to point to a > row in relation B that doesn't exist > - join optimization - knowledge of how two relations are logically connected > can help perform joins in a more optimal way > > HBase, of course, provides neither of these features out of the box, so there > is no difference between an implied (weakly coupled, to use your term) > relationship and something stronger. > > Where it gets interesting is in the kind of denormalization you're talking > about, where information that properly belongs to one entity is copied into > another one for efficiency's sake, or to get some kind of atomicity > protection. Your scenario below is doing this (duplicating customer info in > the order records). > > To be fair, relational DBs also force this kind of behavior sometimes, again > for efficiency reasons (we've all done it). HBase just starts there. :) > > Ian > > On Jul 5, 2013, at 4:22 PM, "Michael Segel" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> An entity is an entity. >> When you couple them you are saying that there's a relationship to them in >> the model. >> >> What I am saying is that you can have an HBase model which is not a single >> table, however when you look at your use case, you are querying data from a >> single table at a time. >> >> Going back to the order entry system. You may have a customer table which >> maintains all of the information about your customer yet you will also >> duplicate portions of the data in to the order system. You still have other >> entities such as your orders, pick slips, shipping and invoices. There won't >> be a hard or strong relationship between the customer table and the order >> table. >> >> When you go to your ERD tool, you wouldn't show a strong coupling of the >> data. >> >> Does that make sense? >> >> On Jul 5, 2013, at 1:56 PM, Ian Varley <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Mike, what do you mean by "you can have entities, except that they are not >>> coupled"? You mean, they have no relationship to each other? Or the >>> relationship is defined elsewhere (e.g. application code)? The concept of >>> "coupling" seems a little overloaded and not as concise here as >>> "relationship". Two tuples in a database can have a wide number of >>> relationships to each other; the kinds of relationships that are actively >>> supported differs between a traditional RDBMS and HBase, and proper HBase >>> design requires understand these limitations precisely. >>> >>> I'm not trying to be an >>> ER<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93relationship_model> >>> apologist, there are a lot of ways in which it sucks. :) But if we want to >>> evolve, we can't just pretend there's no history here to build on. >>> >>> Ian >>> >>> On Jul 5, 2013, at 1:41 PM, Michael Segel wrote: >>> >>> LOL... >>> >>> Ian wrote: >>> "But, something just occurred to me: just because your physical >>> implementation (HBase) doesn't support normalized entities and >>> relationships doesn't mean your *problem* doesn't have entities and >>> relationships. :) An Author is one entity, a Title is another, and a Genre >>> is a third. Understanding how they interact is a prerequisite for >>> translating into a physical model that works well in HBase. (ERD modeling >>> is not categorically the only way to understand that, but I've yet to hear >>> a credible alternative that doesn't boil down to either ERD or "do it in >>> your head"). >>> " >>> >>> You can have entities, except that they are not coupled. >>> >>> If you have a common key, then you may have a use for column families, it >>> just depends on your data and how you access your data. >>> >>> Its not rocket science, but its a non-trivial matter. Not doing it right >>> may mean that you are not going to get the most out of your system. >>> >>> >>> On Jul 5, 2013, at 1:26 PM, Ian Varley >>> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> But, something just occurred to me: just because your physical >>> implementation (HBase) doesn't support normalized entities and >>> relationships doesn't mean your *problem* doesn't have entities and >>> relationships. :) An Author is one entity, a Title is another, and a Genre >>> is a third. Understanding how they interact is a prerequisite for >>> translating into a physical model that works well in HBase. (ERD modeling >>> is not categorically the only way to understand that, but I've yet to hear >>> a credible alternative that doesn't boil down to either ERD or "do it in >>> your head"). >>> >>> >> >
