Note: This page is out of date. It was written with respect to the distribution of HBase in hadoop-0.16.0.

Assuming HBase is installed and running, type hbase shell to start up HBase Shell. You'll see something like:

Hbase Shell, 0.0.2 version.
Copyright (c) 2007 by udanax, licensed to Apache Software Foundation.
Type 'help;' for usage.

hql > 

Now, issue the following command:

hql > create table 'test' ('family1', 'family2');

Columns in HBase are grouped into "column families". The above command creates a table named "test" that has two column families, "family1" and "family2".

Now issue the following command:

hql > insert into 'test' ('family1:col1', 'family2:col1') values ('abc', 'def') where row = '1';

Columns in HBase are uniquely identified as x:y, where x is the column family and y is the column name. In the command above, we've inserted some values into "family1:col1" and "family2:col1". Now we can query:

hql > select * from 'test'; 
08/03/21 21:14:15 INFO hbase.HTable: Creating scanner over test starting at key 
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Row                     | Column                  | Cell                    |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| 1                       | family1:col1            | abc                     |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| 1                       | family2:col1            | def                     |
+-------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
1 row(s) in set. (0.13 sec)

Let's add some more columns and rows:

hql > insert into 'test' ('family1:col2', 'family2:col2') values ('123', '456') where row = '1';  

hql > insert into 'test' ('family1:col1', 'family1:col2', 'family2:col1', 'family2:col2') values ('HBase', 'is', 'very', 'cool') where row = '2';

Now we can issue some queries:

hql > select 'family1:col1' from 'test'; 
08/03/21 21:19:39 INFO hbase.HTable: Creating scanner over test starting at key 
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Row                                  | Cell                                 |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| 1                                    | abc                                  |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| 2                                    | HBase                                |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
2 row(s) in set. (0.12 sec)
hql > select * from 'test' where row = '1';
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Column                               | Cell                                 |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| family1:col1                         | abc                                  |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| family1:col2                         | 123                                  |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| family2:col1                         | def                                  |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| family2:col2                         | 456                                  |
+--------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
1 row(s) in set. (0.03 sec)

Now you have an idea of what HBase is all about!

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