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From: Cameron Leach <cameron.developer@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:46:13 -0800
Message-ID: <AANLkTimY4MqLN6U58AxzndcggdpVoifM=F4HCLMNv_7J@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Modeling Multi-Valued Fields
To: hbase-user@hadoop.apache.org
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--20cf30051392dd4284049e17031e
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

~resending to hbase-user@hadoop.apache.org~

Is there a best-practice for modeling multi-valued fields (fields that are
repeated or collections of fields)? Our current data model allows for a User
to store multiple email addresses:

User {
  Integer id; //row key
  List<Email> emails;

  Email {
    String type; //home, work, gmail, hotmail, etc...
    String address;
  }
}

So if I setup a 'User' table with an 'Email' column family, how would one
support multiple email addresses, storing values for the 'type' and
'address' columns? I've seen it suggested to have dynamic column names, but
this doesn't seem practical, unless someone can make it more clear how that
strategy would work.

Thanks!

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