In the previous chapter, we saw how to create a table and simple data operations using the HBase shell. HBase can be accessed using a variety of clients, such as REST clients, Thrift client, object mapper framework—Kundera, and so on. HBase clients are discussed in detail in Chapter 6, HBase Clients. HBase also offers advanced Java-based APIs for playing with tables and column families. (HBase shell is a wrapper around this Java API.) This API also supports metadata management, for example, data compression for column family, region split, and so on. In addition to schema definition, the API also provides an interface for a table scan with various functions such as limiting the number of columns returned or limiting the number of versions of each cell to be stored. For data manipulation, the Hbase API supports create, read, update, and delete operations on individual rows. This API comes with many advanced features, which will be discussed throughout this book.