Final answer:
Cloud Bigtable is like a persistent hashtable that allows for storing and retrieving data using key-value pairs efficiently. It supports sparsely populated items.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cloud Bigtable can be thought of as a persistent hashtable because it provides a way to store and retrieve data using a key-value pair structure, similar to a hashtable.
Each item in Cloud Bigtable is stored with a unique key, and the data is indexed and organized based on these keys, allowing for efficient lookup and retrieval.
Furthermore, Cloud Bigtable allows for sparsely populated items, meaning that not all fields within an item need to be populated. This provides flexibility in storing data and reduces storage space requirements for sparse data.