Set Up Lindorm Shell and Connect to LindormTable - Lindorm

Lindorm Shell is an HBase client tool that connects to LindormTable using the HBase Java API. Use it to create tables, read and write data, and run DDL operations from the command line. The setup takes about 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.8 or later installed
The client machine's IP address added to your Lindorm instance whitelist. See Configure a whitelist

Usage notes

Lindorm Shell supports simple data definition language (DDL) and data read/write operations only. For unsupported operations, see Limits on HBase API.
Do not use Lindorm Shell to access wide tables created with SQL. This can cause garbled characters.
Lindorm Shell runs on Linux and macOS.

Important

Running Lindorm Shell on Windows may cause errors or missing libraries. If this happens, add the required libraries based on the error messages.

Connect to LindormTable

Step 1: Download Lindorm Shell

Log on to the Lindorm console. In the upper-left corner, select the region where your instance is located. On the Instances page, click the target instance ID.
In the left navigation pane, click Database Connections, then click the Wide Table Engine tab.
Click Lindorm Shell Download.

Step 2: Extract the package

Run tar to extract the downloaded package. The following example extracts it to the alihbase-2.0.18 folder.

tar zxvf hbaseue-shell.tar.gz

Step 3: Configure connection parameters

Open hbase-site.xml in the alihbase-2.0.18/conf directory.
```
vi alihbase-2.0.18/conf/hbase-site.xml
```

Set the endpoint, username, and password:

Parameter	Description
`hbase.zookeeper.quorum`	The Access By Using HBase Java API endpoint for the Wide Table Engine. Use the VPC endpoint if Lindorm Shell runs on an ECS instance in the same VPC as your Lindorm instance. Use the public endpoint if it runs on a local machine or an ECS instance in a different VPC.
`hbase.client.username`	The username for LindormTable.
`hbase.client.password`	The password for LindormTable. To reset a forgotten password, see Change a user password in the LindormTable Cluster Management System.

<configuration>
    <property>
        <name>hbase.zookeeper.quorum</name>
        <value>ld-bp17j28j2y7pm****-proxy-lindorm-pub.lindorm.rds.aliyuncs.com:30020</value>
    </property>
    <property>
        <name>hbase.client.username</name>
        <value>testuser</value>
    </property>
    <property>
        <name>hbase.client.password</name>
        <value>password</value>
    </property>
</configuration>

Step 4: Start Lindorm Shell

Run hbase shell from the alihbase-2.0.18/bin directory:

./hbase shell

A successful connection shows output similar to:

Version 2.0.18, r08b8d58a9d6ce89765d5ebe2ddff425aed644c16, Mon Feb  1 12:46:39 CST 2021
Took 0.0034 seconds

Lindorm Shell reference

Command reference

For the full list of shell commands, see Apache HBase Shell.

Enter and exit the shell

Use hbase shell to enter the shell environment:

bin/hbase shell

Use quit to exit:

quit

Data definition language (DDL)

Command	Description
`create`	Creates a table
`list`	Lists all tables
`describe`	Shows table properties and schema
`alter`	Modifies a table
`exists`	Checks whether a table exists
`disable`	Disables a table (required before `drop` or `alter`)
`is_disabled`	Checks whether a table is disabled
`enable`	Re-enables a disabled table
`is_enabled`	Checks whether a table is enabled
`drop`	Deletes a disabled table

Data manipulation language (DML)

Command	Description
`put`	Writes a value to a specific cell
`get`	Reads a specific row or cell
`scan`	Scans an entire table or a row range
`count`	Returns the number of rows in a table
`delete`	Deletes a specific cell
`deleteall`	Deletes all cells in a row
`truncate_preserve`	Deletes all table data while preserving the original region partitions

Operation examples

Create a table and insert data

Use create to create a table. Specify the table name and at least one column family name.
```
create 'table_name', 'column_family_name'
```
Example:
```
create 'test', 'cf'
```
Use put to insert rows. The syntax is put 'table', 'rowkey', 'column_family:column', 'value'.
```
put 'test', 'row1', 'cf:a', 'value1'
put 'test', 'row2', 'cf:b', 'value2'
put 'test', 'row3', 'cf:c', 'value3'
```
row1 is the rowkey of the test table, cf:a specifies the column family name and column name, and value1 is the value.

Query data

Use list to list all tables. Pass an optional regular expression to filter results.
```
list
list 'abc.*'
list 'test'
```

Use scan to read all rows in a table, or query a row range. It is slower than get for single-row lookups.

scan 'test'

Result:

ROW                                      COLUMN+CELL
 row1                                    column=cf:a, timestamp=1421762485768, value=value1
 row2                                    column=cf:b, timestamp=1421762491785, value=value2
 row3                                    column=cf:c, timestamp=1421762496210, value=value3
3 row(s) in 0.0230 seconds

Use get to retrieve a single row by rowkey.

get 'test', 'row1'

Result:

COLUMN                                   CELL
 cf:a                                    timestamp=1421762485768, value=value1
1 row(s) in 0.0350 seconds

Disable and enable a table

Use disable before modifying or dropping a table. Use enable to restore it afterward.

disable 'table_name'
enable 'table_name'

Delete a table

Use drop to delete a disabled table.

drop 'table_name'

Common configurations

After you modify the configuration, run describe to verify that the changes have taken effect:

describe 'table_name'

Set major compaction epoch

Set the major compaction interval for a column family. The unit is milliseconds. Avoid changing this unless necessary.

The following example sets the interval to 7 days:

alter 'table_name', {NAME => 'column_family_name', CONFIGURATION => {'hbase.hregion.majorcompaction' => 16800000}}

The default value is Math.Min(TTL, 1,728,000,000 ms). Without a TTL, the default is 20 days (1,728,000,000 ms).

Set data compression

Set the compression algorithm for a column family. ZSTD is recommended.

alter 'table_name', NAME => 'column_family_name', COMPRESSION => 'ZSTD'

Set block encoding

Set the block encoding type (DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING) for a column family.

alter 'table_name', NAME => 'column_family_name', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING => 'DIFF'

Set TTL

Set the time to live (TTL) for a column family in seconds. For example, 2,592,000 seconds equals 30 days.

alter 'table_name', NAME => 'column_family_name', TTL => 2592000

To retain data indefinitely, set TTL to FOREVER:

alter 'table_name', {NAME => 'column_family_name', TTL => 'FOREVER'}

Pre-split a table

Create a table with pre-splitting to distribute data evenly across shards from the start. Calculate the number of shards based on 6–8 GB of storage per shard.

create 'table_name', {NAME => 'column_family_name', COMPRESSION => 'snappy'}, {NUMREGIONS => 50, SPLITALGO => 'HexStringSplit'}

Parameter	Description
`NAME`	The column family name.
`COMPRESSION`	The compression algorithm. Options: `ZSTD` (recommended), `SNAPPY`, `LZ4`. No compression is applied by default.
`NUMREGIONS`	The number of shards. Base this on 6–8 GB per shard.
`SPLITALGO`	The partition-splitting algorithm. `HexStringSplit` — for rowkeys prefixed with a hexadecimal string. `DecimalStringSplit` — for rowkeys prefixed with a decimal string. `UniformSplit` — for rowkeys with a fully random prefix.

What's next

Limits on HBase API — operations not supported when connecting via HBase API
Apache HBase Shell reference — full command reference for HBase Shell