hbase rowkey design - nosql

I am moving from mysql to hbase due to increasing data.
I am designing rowkey for efficient access pattern.
I want to achieve 3 goals.
Get all results of email address
Get all results of email address + item_type
Get all results of particular email address + item_id
I have 4 attributes to choose from
user email
reverse timestamp
item_type
item_id
What should my rowkey look like to get rows efficiently?
Thanks

Assuming your main access is by email you can have your main table key as
email + reverse time + item_id (assuming item_id gives you uniqueness)
You can have an additional "index" table with email+item_type+reverse time+item_id and email+item_id as keys that maps to the first table (so retrieving by these is a two step process)

Maybe you are already headed in the right direction as far as concatenated row keys: in any case following comes to mind from your post:
Partitioning key likely consists of your reverse timestamp plus the most frequently queried natural key - would that be the email? Let us suppose so: then choose to make the prefix based on which of the two (reverse timestamp vs email) provides most balanced / non-skewed distribution of your data. That makes your region servers happier.
Choose based on better balanced distribution of records:
reverse timestamp plus most frequently queried natural key
e.g. reversetimestamp-email
or email-reversetimestamp
In that manner you will avoid hot spotting on your region servers.
.
To obtain good performance on the additional (secondary ) indexes, that is not "baked into" hbase yet: they have a design doc for it (look under SecondaryIndexing in the wiki).
But you can build your own a couple of ways:
a) use coprocessor to write the item_type as rowkey to separate tabole with a column containing the original (user_email-reverse timestamp (or vice-versa) fact table rowke
b) if disk space not issue and/or the rows are small, just go ahead and duplicate the entire row in the second (and third for the item-id case) tables.

Related

Statistics of all/many tables in FileMaker

I'm writing a kind of summary page for my FileMaker solution.
For this, I have define a "statistics" table, which uses formula fields with ExecuteSQL to gather info from most tables, such as number of records, recently changed records, etc.
This strangely takes a long time - around 10 seconds when I have a total of about 20k records in about 10 tables. The same SQL on any database system shouldn't take more than some fractions of a second.
What could the reason be, what can I do about it and where can I start debugging to figure out what's causing all this time?
The actual code is, like this:
SQLAusführen ( "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM " & _Stats::Table ; "" ; "" )
SQLAusführen ( "SELECT SUM(\"some_field_name\") FROM " & _Stats::Table ; "" ; "" )
Where "_Stats" is my statistics table, and it has a string field "Table" where I store the name of the other tables.
So each row in this _Stats table should have the stats for the table named in the "Table" field.
Update: I'm not using FileMaker server, this is a standalone client application.
We can definitely talk about why it may be slow. Usually this has mostly to do with the size and complexity of your schema. That is "usually", as you have found.
Can you instead use the DDR ( database design report ) instead? Much will depend on what you are actually doing with this data. Tools like FMPerception also will give you many of the stats you are looking for. Again, depends on what you are doing with it.
Also, can you post your actual calculation? Is the statistic table using unstored calculations? Is the statistics table related to any of the other tables? These are a couple things that will affect how ExecuteSQL performs.
One thing to keep in mind, whether ExecuteSQL, a Perform Find, or relationship, it's all the same basic query under-the-hood. So if it would be slow doing it one way, it's going to likely be slow with any other directly related approach.
Taking these one at a time:
All records count.
Placing an unstored calc in the target table allows you to get the count of the records through the relationship, without triggering a transfer of all records to the client. You can get the value from the first record in the relationship. Super light way to get that info vs using Count which requires FileMaker to touch every record on the other side.
Sum of Records Matching a Value.
using a field on the _Stats table with a relationship to the target table will reduce how much work FileMaker has to do to give you an answer.
Then having a Summary field in the target table so sum the records may prove to be more efficient than using an aggregate function. The summary field will also only sum the records that match the relationship. ( just don't show that field on any of your layouts if you don't need it )
ExecuteSQL is fastest when it can just rely on a simple index lookup. Once you get outside of that, it's primarily about testing to find the sweet-spot. Typically, I will use ExecuteSQL for retrieving either a JSON object from a user table, or verifying a single field value. Once you get into sorting and aggregate functions, you step outside of the optimizations of the function.
Also note, if you have an open record ( that means you as the current user ), FileMaker Server doesn't know what data you have on the client side, and so it sends ALL of the records. That's why I asked if you were using unstored calcs with ExecuteSQL. It can seem slow when you can't control when the calculations fire. Often I will put the updating of that data into a scheduled script.

Reference foreign keys using SSIS-Lookup

I am asking for help on the following topic. I am trying to create an ETL process with two Excel data sources (S1 ~300 rows and S2 ~7000 rows). S1 contains project information and employee details and S2 contains the amount of hours, which each employee worked in which project at a timestamp.
I want to insert the amount of hours, which each employee worked in each project at a timestamp, into the fact table by referencing to the existing primary keys in the dimension tables. If an entry is not present in the dimension tables already, i want to add a new entry first and use the newly generated id. The destination table structure looks as follows (Data Warehouse, Star Schema):Destination Table Structure
In SSIS, i created three Data Flow tasks for filling the Dimension Tables (project, employee and time) with distinct values (using group by, as S1 and S2 contain a lot of duplicate rows)first, and a fourth data flow task (see image below) to insert the FactTable data, and this is where I'm running into problems:
Data Flow Task FactTable
I am using three LookUp functions to retrieve the foreignKeys project_id, employee_id and time_id from the Dimension tables (using project name, employee number and timestamp). If the id is found, it is passed on all the way to Merge Join 1, if not, a new Dimension Entry is created (lets say project) and the generated project_id passed on instead. Same goes for employee and time respectively.
There is two issues with this:
1) The "amount of hours" (passed by Multicast four, see image above) is not matched in the final result (No Match)
2) The amount of rows being inserted keeps increasing forever (Endless Join, I belive due to the Merge joins).
What I've tried:
I have used one UNION instead of three Merge Joins before, but this resulted in the foreign keys being in seperate rows each, instead of merged together.
I used Merge (instead of Merge Join) and combined the join as well as sort conditions in as I fell all possible ways.
I understand that this scenario might be confusing for everybody else, but thank your for taking time looking at it! Any help is greatly appreciated.
Solved it
For anybody having similar issues:
Seperate Data Flows for filling Dimension Tables with those filling Fact Tables will do the trick.
Its a clean solution and easier to debug.
Also: Dont run the LookUp Functions in parallel, but rather one after each other and pass on the attributes. Saves unnecessary Merges as well.
So as a Sum Up:
Four Data Flow Tasks, three for filling dimension tables ONLY and one for filling fact tables ONLY.
Loading Multiple Tables using SSIS keeping foreign key relationships
The answer posted by onupdatecascade is basically it.
Good luck!

How to implement a high performing non incremental ID in postgresql? [duplicate]

I would like to replace some of the sequences I use for id's in my postgresql db with my own custom made id generator. The generator would produce a random number with a checkdigit at the end. So this:
SELECT nextval('customers')
would be replaced by something like this:
SELECT get_new_rand_id('customer')
The function would then return a numerical value such as: [1-9][0-9]{9} where the last digit is a checksum.
The concerns I have is:
How do I make the thing atomic
How do I avoid returning the same id twice (this would be caught by trying to insert it into a column with unique constraint but then its to late to I think)
Is this a good idea at all?
Note1: I do not want to use uuid since it is to be communicated with customers and 10 digits is far simpler to communicate than the 36 character uuid.
Note2: The function would rarely be called with SELECT get_new_rand_id() but would be assigned as default value on the id-column instead of nextval().
EDIT: Ok, good discussusion below! Here are some explanation for why:
So why would I over-comlicate things this way? The purpouse is to hide the primary key from the customers.
I give each new customer a unique
customerId (generated serial number in
the db). Since I communicate that
number with the customer it is a
fairly simple task for my competitors
to monitor my business (there are
other numbers such as invoice nr and
order nr that have the same
properties). It is this monitoring I
would like to make a little bit
harder (note: not impossible but
harder).
Why the check digit?
Before there was any talk of hiding the serial nr I added a checkdigit to ordernr since there were klumbsy fingers at some points in the production, and my thought was that this would be a good practice to keep in the future.
After reading the discussion I can certainly see that my approach is not the best way to solve my problem, but I have no other good idea of how to solve it, so please help me out here.
Should I add an extra column where I put the id I expose to the customer and keep the serial as primary key?
How can I generate the id to expose in a sane and efficient way?
Is the checkdigit necessary?
For generating unique and random-looking identifiers from a serial, using ciphers might be a good idea. Since their output is bijective (there is a one-to-one mapping between input and output values) -- you will not have any collisions, unlike hashes. Which means your identifiers don't have to be as long as hashes.
Most cryptographic ciphers work on 64-bit or larger blocks, but the PostgreSQL wiki has an example PL/pgSQL procedure for a "non-cryptographic" cipher function that works on (32-bit) int type. Disclaimer: I have not tried using this function myself.
To use it for your primary keys, run the CREATE FUNCTION call from the wiki page, and then on your empty tables do:
ALTER TABLE foo ALTER COLUMN foo_id SET DEFAULT pseudo_encrypt(nextval('foo_foo_id_seq')::int);
And voila!
pg=> insert into foo (foo_id) values(default);
pg=> insert into foo (foo_id) values(default);
pg=> insert into foo (foo_id) values(default);
pg=> select * from foo;
foo_id
------------
1241588087
1500453386
1755259484
(4 rows)
I added my comment to your question and then realized that I should have explained myself better... My apologies.
You could have a second key - not the primary key - that is visible to the user. That key could use the primary as the seed for the hash function you describe and be the one that you use to do lookups. That key would be generated by a trigger after insert (which is much simpler than trying to ensure atomicity of the operation) and
That is the key that you share with your clients, never the PK. I know there is debate (albeit, I can't understand why) if PKs are to be invisible to the user applications or not. The modern database design practices, and my personal experience, all seem to suggest that PKs should NOT be visible to users. They tend to attach meaning to them and, over time, that is a very bad thing - regardless if they have a check digit in the key or not.
Your joins will still be done using the PK. This other generated key is just supposed to be used for client lookups. They are the face, the PK is the guts.
Hope that helps.
Edit: FWIW, there is little to be said about "right" or "wrong" in database design. Sometimes it boils down to a choice. I think the choice you face will be better served by leaving the PK alone and creating a secondary key - just that.
I think you are way over-complicating this. Why not let the database do what it does best and let it take care of atomicity and ensuring that the same id is not used twice? Why not use a postgresql SERIAL type and get an autogenerated surrogate primary key, just like an integer IDENTITY column in SQL Server or DB2? Use that on the column instead. Plus it will be faster than your user-defined function.
I concur regarding hiding this surrogate primary key and using an exposed secondary key (with a unique constraint on it) to lookup clients in your interface.
Are you using a sequence because you need a unique identifier across several tables? This is usually an indication that you need to rethink your table design, and those several tables should perhaps be combined into one, with an autogenerated surrogate primary key.
Also see here
How you generate the random and unique ids is a useful question - but you seem to be making a counter productive assumption about when to generate them!
My point is that you do not need to generate these id's at the time of creating your rows, because they are essentially independent of the data being inserted.
What I do is pre-generate random id's for future use, that way I can take my own sweet time and absolutely guarantee they are unique, and there's no processing to be done at the time of the insert.
For example I have an orders table with order_id in it. This id is generated on the fly when the user enters the order, incrementally 1,2,3 etc forever. The user does not need to see this internal id.
Then I have another table - random_ids with (order_id, random_id). I have a routine that runs every night which pre-loads this table with enough rows to more than cover the orders that might be inserted in the next 24 hours. (If I ever get 10000 orders in one day I'll have a problem - but that would be a good problem to have!)
This approach guarantees uniqueness and takes any processing load away from the insert transaction and into the batch routine, where it does not affect the user.
Your best bet would probably be some form of hash function, and then a checksum added to the end.
If you're not using this too often (you do not have a new customer every second, do you?) then it is feasible to just get a random number and then try to insert the record. Just be prepared to retry inserting with another number when it fails with unique constraint violation.
I'd use numbers 1000000 to 999999 (900000 possible numbers of the same length) and check digit using UPC or ISBN 10 algorithm. 2 check digits would be better though as they'll eliminate 99% of human errors instead of 9%.

Are there any alternatives to HBASE in particular with regards to key range scans?

The most relevant feature that I appreciate in HBASE is the key range scan, where you can combine your keys under a higher level key with lower level ones, which allows you to obtain a hierarchy of data related to the higher level keys.
For example:
CUSTOMER ID = C100
DEPARTMENT ID = D100
USER ID = U100
The key for the above example would be
C100D100U100K01 : "my data for k01"
C100D100U100K02 : "my data for k02"
C100D100U100K03 : "my data for k03"
...
With the above, you would be able to fetch all of the data related to your customer ID by performing a range scan on C100* or if more details where needed, by department such as C100D100U100*, and so on.
Are there any alternatives to HBASE with this regard in the NOSQL spectrum of solutions ?
Any hierarchical key-value store would work. There's a (short) list on Wikipedia : Hierarchical key-value store.
The one I know best is GT.M, where your sample data could look like this :
customer("C100","D100","U100","K01")="my data for k01"
customer("C100","D100","U100","K02")="my data for k02"
customer("C100","D100","U100","K03")="my data for k03"
So customer("C100") would gives you access to all the data of a single customer, customer("C100","D100") would gives you access to all the data for a single department for a single customer, etc.
Couchbase has similar functionality if you use views (an index). You can create a view on all the keys, and do range queries over them. As far as I know, you can only wildcard over the end of a key but not the beginning, e.g.:
AAABBBCCCDDD* // yes
*BBBCCCDDDEEE // no
AAA*CCCDDDEEE // no
This is because it sorts the keys, and when you query you're getting a sub-range. However, you can get around this by creating views that sort by a different order.
More info: http://www.couchbase.com/docs/couchbase-manual-2.0/couchbase-views.html
Riak has secondary indexes that would allow querying data by matching the index or by range scan. The results from secondary indexes can be used as an input for Riak's MapReduce. Check this for more details: riak secondary indexes

Cassandra: making a data model / schema

(Not sure what its called... model.. schema.. super model?)
I have 'n' (uniquely id'd) sensors in 'm' (uniquely id'd) homes. Each of these fires 0 to 'k' times / day (in blocks of 1-5). This data is currently stored in MySQL with a table for each 'home' and a structure of:
time stamp
sensor id
firing count
Im having trouble wrapping my mind around a 'nosql' model of this data that would allow me to find counts of firings by home, time, or sensor.
.. Or maybe this isn't the right kind of data to push to nosql? Our current server is bogging down under the load ( hundreds of millions of rows x hundreds of homes ). Im very interested in finding a data store that allows the scalability of cassandra.
It depends. Think "Query first" approach:
identify the queries
model the data
So, while you might have a Column Family which is your physical model, you will also have one or more which provide the data as it is queried. And, you can further take advantage of Cassandra features, such as:
Column Names can contain data. You don't have to store a value, each of the names could be a timestamp, for example
It is well suited to store thousands of columns for each key and the columns will remain sorted and can access in forward or reverse order; so, to continue above example, can easily get list of all timestamps for a sensor
Composite data types allow you to combine multiple bits of data into keys, names, or values. e.g. combine house id and sensor id
Counter Columns provide an simple value increment, even for the initial value, so just always a write operation.
Indexes can be defined on static column names which in effect, provides a reverse Column Family with the key as the result, just be careful of bucket size (e.g. might not want values to millisec)
To store firing count by sensor and house:
House_Sensors <-Column family
house_id <-Key
sensor_id <-Column name
firing_count <-Column value
Data represented in JSON-ish notation
House_Sensors = {
house_1 : {
sensor_1: 3436,
sensor_2: 46,
sensor_3: 99,
...
},
house_2 : {
sensor_7: 0,
sensor_8: 444,
...
},
...
}
You may want to define another column family with sensor_id as key to store the firing timestamp.
Think what queries you need when designing the schema and denormalize as needed. Repeat data, Cassandra inserts are very fast.
The timestamp of the firing is not stored in House_Sensor column family. Create a new column family for that with sensor_id as key.
This way you can use House_Sensor family to query firing count and what sensor belongs to each house. Use the other column family to query the firing timestamp.