Hey Kevin, (Moved this to the HBase user lists as it is more appropriate there - cause of the libs you are using per your question. BCC'd mapreduce-user and CC'd you in case you aren't subscribed to HBase user lists).
The TableOutputFormat ignores keys. So it is safe to pass a null object. This is also documented at http://hbase.apache.org/apidocs/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/mapreduce/TableOutputFormat.html On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Kevin <kevin.macksa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I am going through some samples of using MapReduce with HBase. My question > is concerning the importance of the KEYOUT type of a TableReducer. Does the > output key really matter if the output value must always be a Put or a > Delete instance, in which the row key for the sink table is always > specified? Can I just use null when writing the output key in the reducer > class (e.g., context.write(null, MyPut))? It seems like in this usage of > MapReduce the keyout would be only used when chaining jobs. > > -Kevin -- Harsh J