Bigtable and the HBase API
One way to communicate with Bigtable is through the Cloud Bigtable HBase client for Java, which is a customized version of the Apache HBase client. The Cloud Bigtable HBase client for Java enables you to write Java applications that communicate with Bigtable through the open-source HBase API. The client is compatible with HBase API versions 1.x and 2.x.
To learn how to add the HBase client for Java to your application, see Client Libraries.
Source code for the client is available in the GitHub repository googleapis/java-bigtable-hbase. Sample code that uses the client is available in the following GitHub repositories:
When you use the Cloud Bigtable HBase client for Java, you don't need to run the HBase server. You are simply using a modified version of the HBase client interface. Google runs and maintains the servers for the Bigtable service.
Because HBase and Bigtable are not identical, there are minor differences between the standard HBase API and the HBase API for Cloud Bigtable. See Differences between the HBase and Bigtable APIs for details.
The Cloud Bigtable HBase client for Java works with Hadoop 2.4 and later. It requires a Java 8 runtime environment.
What's next
- View a "hello world" example for the HBase client for Java.
- Learn how to connect to Bigtable.
- Find out how to add the client library to your application.