This section will describe common schema design questions that appear on the dist-list. These are general guidelines and not laws - each application must consider it's own needs.
A common question is whether one should prefer rows or HBase's built-in-versioning. The context is typically where there are "a lot" of versions of a row to be retained (e.g., where it is significantly above the HBase default of 3 max versions). The rows-approach would require storing a timstamp in some portion of the rowkey so that they would not overwite with each successive update.
Preference: Rows (generally speaking).
Another common question is whether one should prefer rows or columns. The context is typically in extreme cases of wide tables, such as having 1 row with 1 million attributes, or 1 million rows with 1 columns apiece.
Preference: Rows (generally speaking). To be clear, this guideline is in the context is in extremely wide cases, not in the standard use-case where one needs to store a few dozen or hundred columns.