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In cassandra column families are just table

What's the difference between creating a table and creating a columnfamily in Cassandra?

but it seems like column family is referring to something else in gcp bigtable

https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs/schema-design

what exactly is column family in gcp bigtable?

bigtable is a key value store right?

And how does bigtable store its data?

        column1               column2
row1    row1_column1_value    row1_column2_value
row2    row1_column1_value    row1_column2_value

Is it stored as

rowKey1:column1_value:column2_value rowKey2:column1_value2:column2_value2

or

rowKey1:column1_value rowKey2:column1_value2
rowKey1:column2_value rowKey2:column2_value2
user16367669
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1 Answers1

3

Column Family in Cloud Bigtable refers to the set of columns that are related to one another and/or typically used together. These grouping of columns in Bigtable helps organize the data and limit what you’re pulling back.

As illustrated in the Bigtable documentation, below is a sample table structure of a BT table (edited with values):

enter image description here

To futher illustrate this, see this corresponding table using the cbt tool:

----------------------------------------
r1
  cf1:c1                                   @ 2021/12/20-06:27:45.349000
    "val1"
  cf1:c2                                   @ 2021/12/20-06:29:15.517000
    "val3"
  cf2:c2                                   @ 2021/12/20-06:48:09.685000
    "val5"
----------------------------------------
r2
  cf1:c1                                   @ 2021/12/20-06:28:33.973000
    "val2"
  cf1:c2                                   @ 2021/12/20-06:29:29.219000
    "val4"
  cf2:c1                                   @ 2021/12/20-06:49:24.112000
    "val6"

Additionally, you may try the quickstart guide to get familiarize with Bigtable.

Mabel A.
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