Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data
Bigtable is a sparse, sorted, multi-dimensional map: rows are kept in order, split into tablets, and served by tablet servers backed by GFS and an LSM-style write path. Column families and timestamps give applications structure without a relational schema.
Key ideas
- Sorted row keys turn range scans into locality
- Tablets split and move as load changes
- The write path is a memtable plus immutable SSTables
Why read it now
It defined the wide-column model that HBase and Cassandra copied, and shows how range partitioning and sorted storage fit together.
Question to keep in mind
How does choosing a row key decide whether your reads are fast and your writes are hot?