title: HBase schema design example
body: <p>I would like some advice about the HBase schema design.
  For example, there are 2000 patients, 1. Each patient has a name, sex, age, hospital_ID. 2. Each patient will be recorded activity data such as heart bits, location and steps every minute. 3. Each patient will take several questionnaires.</p>
  
  <p>how to organise the HBase table?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you very much for your help</p>
  
  <p>My current idea is to use the patient_ID as the row key. each patient will have only one row in the HBase table. But, all activity data will be grouped in the nested table. The activity data table will have millions of rows. 
  So, the table will have three column families. CF1:info, CF2:activity_data, CF3:questionnaires.</p>
  
  <p>Then,
  CF1:info includes (name, sex, age, ID)</p>
  
  <p>CF2:activity_data (data(a nested table))</p>
  
  <p>CF3:questionnaires (questionnaired_ID (a nested table))</p>
  
  <p>I don't know whether this is a smart way to design the HBase schema. 
  Please provide me with some advice.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you very much</p>