Commands Available on HBase Shell

Groups of commands and explanation :

1. General Commands:
   1. status : Shows server status, example
      1 servers, 0 dead, 10.0000 average load
   2. version : Shows version of hbase
      0.90.4, r1150278, Sun Jul 24 15:53:29 PDT 2011
2. DDL Commands:
   1. alter : Using this commmand you can alter the table

Alter column family schema; pass table name and a dictionary

specifying new column family schema. Dictionaries are described

on the main help command output. Dictionary must include name

of column family to alter. For example,

To change or add the 'f1' column family in table 't1' from defaults

to instead keep a maximum of 5 cell VERSIONS, do:

hbase> alter 't1', NAME => 'f1', VERSIONS => 5

To delete the 'f1' column family in table 't1', do:

hbase> alter 't1', NAME => 'f1', METHOD => 'delete'

or a shorter version:

hbase> alter 't1', 'delete' => 'f1'

You can also change table-scope attributes like MAX_FILESIZE

MEMSTORE_FLUSHSIZE, READONLY, and DEFERRED_LOG_FLUSH.

For example, to change the max size of a family to 128MB, do:

hbase> alter 't1', METHOD => 'table_att', MAX_FILESIZE => '134217728'

There could be more than one alteration in one command:

hbase> alter 't1', {NAME => 'f1'}, {NAME => 'f2', METHOD => 'delete'}