Strings with identical keys
Your question should include column values ββand column classifier values. With a row key, these three are uniquely identifying a value in the hbase table.
Also you can turn on versioning for this column family and have multiple values ββthat can have the same "row key + column family + column qualifier" values. In this case, each unique version (value) is defined by "rowkey + col.fam. + Col.qual. + Timestamp"
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You cannot have strings with the same key, but you can have multiple versions of Put using timestamps. You can use these built-in timestamps for auditing or timestamping.
If you issue multiple Puts without a version (timestamp), the latest KV version prevails. If you issue multiple puts of the same timestamp, one of those values ββwill be returned, but HBase makes no guarantees about the order and KV will survive the compaction (scheduled cleanup). If you insert multiple Puts with negative timestamps, it will be very bad. Earlier HBase versions produced unpredictable scan results, and later HBase versions threw an exception.
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From the documentation for the PUT operation :
Put either adds new rows to the table (if the key is new) or can update existing rows (if the key already exists). Bets are done via Table.put (not for writing) or Table.batch (not for writing).
NB: Emphasis mine
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