Apache HBase is an open source NoSQL database that provides real-time read/write access to those large datasets. A non-relational (NoSQL) database that runs on top of HDFS. HBase scales linearly to handle huge data sets with billions of rows and millions of columns, and it easily combines data sources that use a wide variety of different structures and schemas. HBase is natively integrated with Hadoop and works seamlessly alongside other data access engines through YARN.

Apache HBase provides random, real time access to your data in Hadoop. It was created for hosting very large tables, making it a great choice to store multi-structured or sparse data. Users can query HBase for a particular point in time, making “flashback” queries possible. These following characterisitcs make HBase a great choice for storing semi-structured data like log data and then providing that data very quickly to users or applications integrated with HBase.

Enterprises use Apache HBase’s low latency storage for scenarios that require real-time analysis and tabular data for end user applications. One company that provides web security services maintains a system accepting billions of event traces and activity logs from its customer’ desktops every day. The company’s programmers can tightly integrate their security solutions with HBase (to assure that the protection they provide keeps pace with real-time changes in the threat landscape.)

Another company provides stock market ticker plant data that its users query more than thirty thousand times per second, with an SLA of only a few milliseconds. Apache HBase provides that super low-latency access over an enormous, rapidly changing data store.