Viewing data through the HBase REST API

The steps for viewing data through the HBase REST API are not specific to the big data matching, but they are provided here for convenience.

1. From the command line, start the HBase REST server to listen on an available port, for example 9080.

   cd /opt/ibm/biginsights/hbase/bin
   ./hbase-daemon.sh start rest -p 9080

2. From a browser, get the HBase REST API version.

   http://hostname:rest_server_port/version

   The URL returns the version information. For example, rest 0.0.2 [JVM: IBM Corporation 1.6.0-2.4] [OS: Linux 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64 amd64] [Server: jetty/6.1.26] [Jersey: 1.4]
3. To select an individual row:
   1. In the HBase shell, run count 'mytable'. Note the output of the command.
   2. Copy key from the data and add it to the end of the following URL: http://hostname:rest_server_port/mytable/. For example: http://localhost:9080/CA_SantaBarbara_201/33e5c410-7867-37ef-b108-d01ba0a54386
4. Note that the following step is not recommended for large tables. To list all rows, append an asterisk (*): http://hostname:rest_server_port/mytable/*
5. Refer to the Javadoc for additional, detailed examples about how to view, compare, search, and record the search results.