Gets are implemented on top of Scans. The below discussion of Get applies equally to Scans.

By default, i.e. if you specify no explicit version, when doing a get, the cell whose version has the largest value is returned (which may or may not be the latest one written, see later). The default behavior can be modified in the following ways:

The following Get will only retrieve the current version of the row

public static final byte[] CF = "cf".getBytes();
public static final byte[] ATTR = "attr".getBytes();
...
Get get = new Get(Bytes.toBytes("row1"));
Result r = htable.get(get);
byte[] b = r.getValue(CF, ATTR);  // returns current version of value

The following Get will return the last 3 versions of the row.

public static final byte[] CF = "cf".getBytes();
public static final byte[] ATTR = "attr".getBytes();
...
Get get = new Get(Bytes.toBytes("row1"));
get.setMaxVersions(3);  // will return last 3 versions of row
Result r = htable.get(get);
byte[] b = r.getValue(CF, ATTR);  // returns current version of value
List<KeyValue> kv = r.getColumn(CF, ATTR);  // returns all versions of this column

Doing a put always creates a new version of a cell, at a certain timestamp. By default the system uses the server's currentTimeMillis, but you can specify the version (= the long integer) yourself, on a per-column level. This means you could assign a time in the past or the future, or use the long value for non-time purposes.

To overwrite an existing value, do a put at exactly the same row, column, and version as that of the cell you would overshadow.

public static final byte[] CF = "cf".getBytes();
public static final byte[] ATTR = "attr".getBytes();
...
Put put = new Put(Bytes.toBytes(row));
put.add(CF, ATTR, Bytes.toBytes( data));
htable.put(put);

public static final byte[] CF = "cf".getBytes();
public static final byte[] ATTR = "attr".getBytes();
...
Put put = new Put( Bytes.toBytes(row));
long explicitTimeInMs = 555;  // just an example
put.add(CF, ATTR, explicitTimeInMs, Bytes.toBytes(data));
htable.put(put);

There are three different types of internal delete markers. See Lars Hofhansl's blog for discussion of his attempt adding another, Scanning in HBase: Prefix Delete Marker.

When deleting an entire row, HBase will internally create a tombstone for each ColumnFamily (i.e., not each individual column).

Deletes work by creating tombstone markers. For example, let's suppose we want to delete a row. For this you can specify a version, or else by default the currentTimeMillis is used. What this means is “delete all cells where the version is less than or equal to this version”. HBase never modifies data in place, so for example a delete will not immediately delete (or mark as deleted) the entries in the storage file that correspond to the delete condition. Rather, a so-called tombstone is written, which will mask the deleted values. When HBase does a major compaction, the tombstones are processed to actually remove the dead values, together with the tombstones themselves. If the version you specified when deleting a row is larger than the version of any value in the row, then you can consider the complete row to be deleted.

For an informative discussion on how deletes and versioning interact, see the thread Put w/ timestamp -> Deleteall -> Put w/ timestamp fails up on the user mailing list.

Also see Section 9.7.7.6, “KeyValue” for more information on the internal KeyValue format.

Delete markers are purged during the next major compaction of the store, unless the KEEP_DELETED_CELLS option is set in the column family. To keep the deletes for a configurable amount of time, you can set the delete TTL via the hbase.hstore.time.to.purge.deletes property in hbase-site.xml. If hbase.hstore.time.to.purge.deletes is not set, or set to 0, all delete markers, including those with timestamps in the future, are purged during the next major compaction. Otherwise, a delete marker with a timestamp in the future is kept until the major compaction which occurs after the time represented by the marker's timestamp plus the value of hbase.hstore.time.to.purge.deletes, in milliseconds.

Deletes mask puts, even puts that happened after the delete was entered. See HBASE-2256. Remember that a delete writes a tombstone, which only disappears after then next major compaction has run. Suppose you do a delete of everything <= T. After this you do a new put with a timestamp <= T. This put, even if it happened after the delete, will be masked by the delete tombstone. Performing the put will not fail, but when you do a get you will notice the put did have no effect. It will start working again after the major compaction has run. These issues should not be a problem if you use always-increasing versions for new puts to a row. But they can occur even if you do not care about time: just do delete and put immediately after each other, and there is some chance they happen within the same millisecond.

“...create three cell versions at t1, t2 and t3, with a maximum-versions setting of 2. So when getting all versions, only the values at t2 and t3 will be returned. But if you delete the version at t2 or t3, the one at t1 will appear again. Obviously, once a major compaction has run, such behavior will not be the case anymore...” (See Garbage Collection in Bending time in HBase.)