[TEPHRA-45] Support empty values in HBase 1.0+

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Labels: phoenix
• Assignee: Gary Helmling
• Reporter: Gary Helmling
• Created: 18/Nov/14 02:36
• Updated: 05/Aug/15 21:45

Description

Tephra currently handles Delete operations by issuing a Put with an empty byte[] value and interpreting this as a delete tombstone when reading data back. This makes it possible to rollback a Tephra "delete" from a failed transaction with a native HBase Delete issued at the same column/timestamp.

With support for cell tags in HBase 1.0+ (where HFile v3 is enabled by default), we can do better than this, by setting a cell tag indicating that the Put is actually a "delete". This will allow us to correctly distinguish between a Put with an empty value and a delete tombstone.