HBase: Create table with same schema as existing table

Question

I tried searching on the forum, where I can create a new empty hbase table from existing hbase table schema, but not able to find.

To be more precise, suppose I have a table with multiple column families and many column qualifier within those families.

Now I have to create another empty table with the same schema. Do we any way to create table like we do in RDBMS.

Create table new_table as
select * from existing_table where 1=2;

The existing table has a complex structure, so normal hbase create table command with column family and column qualifier specified is not an option.

FYI.. I am using Mapr HBase 0.98.12-mapr-1506 and I do not have option to switch to any advance version or another distribution.

Answer 1

Here is the full-proof approach, I used. Hope it will help other people.

1) launch HBase shell vial below command

 hbase shell

2) Query existing table metadata with below command

 hbase> describe ‘existing_table’;

Output would be similar to:

{NAME => 'cf1', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', VERSIONS => '1', IN_MEMORY => 'false', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING 
=> 'NONE', TTL => 'FOREVER', COMPRESSION => 'NONE', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', BLOCKCACHE => 'true', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', REPLICATION
_SCOPE => '0'}                                                                                                                  
{NAME => 'cf2', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', VERSIONS => '1', IN_MEMORY => 'false', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING 
=> 'NONE', TTL => 'FOREVER', COMPRESSION => 'NONE', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', BLOCKCACHE => 'true', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', REPLICATION
_SCOPE => '0'}

3) Copy this output to a notepad and do below changes:

  a) Replace  TTL => 'FOREVER' with TTL => org.apache.hadoop.hbase.HConstants::FOREVER
  b) Put an additional comma (,) between each column family description to connect column family definition.
  c) Remove newline characters (\n, \r) for the text; such that the content become one line text.

4) Finally running the create query with new table name:

create ‘copy_of_exsting_table_schema’, {NAME => 'cf1', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', VERSIONS => '1', IN_MEMORY => 'false', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING 
=> 'NONE', TTL => org.apache.hadoop.hbase.HConstants::FOREVER, COMPRESSION => 'NONE', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', BLOCKCACHE => 'true', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', REPLICATION
_SCOPE => '0'} ,{NAME => 'cf2', BLOOMFILTER => 'ROW', VERSIONS => '1', IN_MEMORY => 'false', KEEP_DELETED_CELLS => 'FALSE', DATA_BLOCK_ENCODING 
=> 'NONE', TTL => org.apache.hadoop.hbase.HConstants::FOREVER, COMPRESSION => 'NONE', MIN_VERSIONS => '0', BLOCKCACHE => 'true', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', REPLICATION
_SCOPE => '0'}

And you are done. The new table schema is exactly same as existing table.