title: Java: Hadoop: MapReduce: using filters for retrieving data from hbase, int/string comparison
body: <p>I want to retrieve data from hbase for my mapreduce job, but I want to filter it before. I only want to retrieve the data, which contains a column with a id which is bigger or equal than a minId.</p>
  
  <p>Im storing the Id in HBase as a string. Now I wonder if using this filter does work then.</p>
  
  <p><code>
  int minId = 123;
  Filter filter = new ValueFilter(CompareFilter.CompareOp.GREATER_OR_EQUAL, new BinaryComparator(Bytes.toBytes(minId)));</code></p>
  
  <p>How can HBase filter my data, when the ID which is stored is a String, but the value used to compare the data is an int? Can this work? If I use a String for my BinaryComparator (so <code>String mindId = "123";</code> would this work then?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for answers!</p>