About this Book
HBase sits at the top of a stack of complex distributed systems including Apache Hadoop and Apache ZooKeeper. You need not be an expert in all these technologies to make effective use of HBase, but it helps to have an understanding of these foundational layers in order to take full advantage of HBase. These technologies were inspired by papers published by Google. They’re open source clones of the technologies described in these publications. Reading these academic papers isn’t a prerequisite for using HBase or these other technologies; but when you’re learning a technology, it can be helpful to understand the problems that inspired its invention. This book doesn’t assume you’re familiar with these technologies, nor does it assume you’ve read the associated papers.