Case Study - Log Data and Timeseries Data on Steroids
This effectively is the OpenTSDB approach. What OpenTSDB does is re-write data and pack rows into columns for certain time-periods. For a detailed explanation, see: http://opentsdb.net/schema.html, and Lessons Learned from OpenTSDB from HBaseCon2012.
But this is how the general concept works: data is ingested, for example, in this manner…
[hostname][log-event][timestamp1] [hostname][log-event][timestamp2] [hostname][log-event][timestamp3]
with separate rowkeys for each detailed event, but is re-written like this…
[hostname][log-event][timerange]
and each of the above events are converted into columns stored with a time-offset relative to the beginning timerange (e.g., every 5 minutes). This is obviously a very advanced processing technique, but HBase makes this possible.