Hi, We have
<p>Region names are made of the containing table's name, a comma, the start key, a comma, and a randomly generated region id. To illustrate, the region named <em>domains,apache.org,5464829424211263407</em> is party to the table <em>domains</em>, has an id of <em>5464829424211263407</em> and the first key in the region is <em>apache.org</em>. The <em>-ROOT-</em> and <em>.META.</em> 'tables' are internal sytem tables (or 'catalog' tables in db-speak). The -ROOT- keeps a list of all regions in the .META. table. The .META. table keeps a list of all regions in the system. The empty key is used to denote table start and table end. A region with an empty start key is the first region in a table. If region has both an empty start and an empty end key, its the only region in the table. See <a href="http://hbase.org";>HBase Home</a> for further explication.<p> this is *cough* slightly outdated. Need to updated for new style names, eg. usertable,user2023964814,1305724074865.9bd85e8e946817bd12233595eae5a4cf. Important is to note that the trailing dot is IMPORTANT (maybe not why, but we need to say that it needs to be included). Also fix typos in text along the way. Mkay? Lars
