Redis is a fast in-memory key value store that we have been using to develop low latency applications. It is more a cache like Memcached or Ehcache and less like a database (NoSQL or SQL).
You should consider Redis when you need latency less than a few milliseconds or sub millisecond. In such situations Redis can front a more permanent database that might be SQL or NoSQL.
Some very useful features of Redis:
1. It is very easy to setup and get it up and running. See tutorial below.
2. It is very fast. Everything is done in memory. It is single threaded. So there is no overhead of context switching.
3. It supports more data types than a typical key value store. Supported types include Strings, List, HashMap, Set.
4. It supports some atomic operations such incrementing a value, adding to a list. This is important to be able to avoid race conditions when multiple clients are accessing the data.
5. Redis supports master slave replication which is easy to setup. This is an important feature if you have distributed applications.
Let us do a quick hands on tutorial on how to use Redis.
Step 1: Download and build
Download redis from http://redis.io/download.
tar -xvf redis-2.6.14
cd redis-2.6.14
make
This will build the redis-server and redis-cli binaries under the src directory.
Step 2: Run the server
cd src
./redis-server
To interact with the server, start the client with the command
./redis-cli
Step 3: Set and get some simple keys
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> set asimplekey 23
OK
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> get asimplekey
"23"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> incr asimplekey
(integer) 24
incr operation is atomic. Atomic operations are preferred because no locking is required.
Step4: List and Stack operations
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpush alist "value1"
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lindex alist 0
"value1"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpush alist value2
(integer) 2
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lrem alist 1 value2
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpop alist
"value1"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpop alist
(nil)
Step 5: HashMap operations
Here we create a key user1 whose value is a hashmap with keys id,name and title.
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hset user1 id 1
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hset user1 name JohnDoe
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hset user1 title Programmer
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hgetall user1
1) "id"
2) "1"
3) "name"
4) "JohnDoe"
5) "title"
6) "Programmer"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hdel user1 title
(integer) 1
Redis supports several other commands. We will not go over them here. Redis documentation does a pretty good job of describing the commands.
Some additional points to remember :
Redis supports 2 types of persistence which can be useful to be able to recover from crashes. You can configure Redis to either dump snapshots of memory or log each command to an append log. A disadvantage of snapshots is that if your server crashes between snapshots, some data might be lost.
Redis client libraries are available in several programming languages like Java, C, C#, Perl etc. The programming model is the same as shown in the commands above.
Redis requires all data to be in memory. You can configure Redis to reject writes once a certain amount of memory is used up. Without the max memory configuration, if data exceeds available memory, the operating system will start paging and performance of Redis degrades rapidly.
A major limitation of Redis is that it does not support server side sharding. Only client side sharding based on consistent hashing is supported. This means you need to plan in advance, how big your data is going to be and create the appropriate number of shards. Later if your data grows beyond what you planned for and additional shards are required, migration of data to new shards has to be done by writing a client side program.
Support for high availability was lacking, but is now available as beta.
Redis has been incorrectly classified as a NoSQL database. I see it more as a fast cache that can front another more reliable database.
You should consider Redis when you need latency less than a few milliseconds or sub millisecond. In such situations Redis can front a more permanent database that might be SQL or NoSQL.
Some very useful features of Redis:
1. It is very easy to setup and get it up and running. See tutorial below.
2. It is very fast. Everything is done in memory. It is single threaded. So there is no overhead of context switching.
3. It supports more data types than a typical key value store. Supported types include Strings, List, HashMap, Set.
4. It supports some atomic operations such incrementing a value, adding to a list. This is important to be able to avoid race conditions when multiple clients are accessing the data.
5. Redis supports master slave replication which is easy to setup. This is an important feature if you have distributed applications.
Let us do a quick hands on tutorial on how to use Redis.
Step 1: Download and build
Download redis from http://redis.io/download.
tar -xvf redis-2.6.14
cd redis-2.6.14
make
This will build the redis-server and redis-cli binaries under the src directory.
Step 2: Run the server
cd src
./redis-server
To interact with the server, start the client with the command
./redis-cli
Step 3: Set and get some simple keys
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> set asimplekey 23
OK
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> get asimplekey
"23"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> incr asimplekey
(integer) 24
incr operation is atomic. Atomic operations are preferred because no locking is required.
Step4: List and Stack operations
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpush alist "value1"
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lindex alist 0
"value1"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpush alist value2
(integer) 2
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lrem alist 1 value2
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpop alist
"value1"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> lpop alist
(nil)
Step 5: HashMap operations
Here we create a key user1 whose value is a hashmap with keys id,name and title.
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hset user1 id 1
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hset user1 name JohnDoe
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hset user1 title Programmer
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hgetall user1
1) "id"
2) "1"
3) "name"
4) "JohnDoe"
5) "title"
6) "Programmer"
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hdel user1 title
(integer) 1
Redis supports several other commands. We will not go over them here. Redis documentation does a pretty good job of describing the commands.
Some additional points to remember :
Redis supports 2 types of persistence which can be useful to be able to recover from crashes. You can configure Redis to either dump snapshots of memory or log each command to an append log. A disadvantage of snapshots is that if your server crashes between snapshots, some data might be lost.
Redis client libraries are available in several programming languages like Java, C, C#, Perl etc. The programming model is the same as shown in the commands above.
Redis requires all data to be in memory. You can configure Redis to reject writes once a certain amount of memory is used up. Without the max memory configuration, if data exceeds available memory, the operating system will start paging and performance of Redis degrades rapidly.
A major limitation of Redis is that it does not support server side sharding. Only client side sharding based on consistent hashing is supported. This means you need to plan in advance, how big your data is going to be and create the appropriate number of shards. Later if your data grows beyond what you planned for and additional shards are required, migration of data to new shards has to be done by writing a client side program.
Support for high availability was lacking, but is now available as beta.
Redis has been incorrectly classified as a NoSQL database. I see it more as a fast cache that can front another more reliable database.
