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Mastering Redis
Mastering Redis

Mastering Redis: Take your knowledge of Redis to the next level to build enthralling applications with ease

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Profile Icon Nelson Profile Icon Vidyasagar N V
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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3 (3 Ratings)
Paperback May 2016 366 pages 1st Edition
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Arrow left icon
Profile Icon Nelson Profile Icon Vidyasagar N V
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€18.99 per month
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3 (3 Ratings)
Paperback May 2016 366 pages 1st Edition
eBook
€24.99 €36.99
Paperback
€45.99
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Renews at €18.99p/m
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Mastering Redis

Chapter 1. Why Redis?

Why Redis? Or, why any technology? Such questions are often mumbled under the breath or asked by the more brave, cynical, or knowledgeable when encountering any new technology or service. Sometimes, the answer is obvious, the technology or service offers features and functionalities that meet an immediate need or solves a vexing problem. In most situations, the reasons for adopting a technology may not be as clear-cut or as apparent or are cloaked in sometimes hyperbolic or indecipherable marketing jargon. Depending on your needs, Redis falls somewhere closer to the obvious end of the spectrum instead of a marketing sales pitch. You may already know and have used Redis for some uses, such as meeting a data storage need or service requirement for an application, but you may not be aware of all that Redis can do or how other people are using Redis in their own organizations. Redis, best known for its speed, is not only fast in its execution but also fast in the sense that solutions built with Redis have fast iterations because of the ease in configuring, setting up, running, and using Redis.

The growing popularity of Redis, an open source key-value NoSQL technology, is a result of Redis's stability, power, and flexibility in executing a wide range of data operations and tasks in the enterprise, REmote DIctionary Server (Redis), is used by a diverse set of companies from start-ups to the largest technology companies such as Twitter and Uber, as well as by individuals and teams in government, schools, and organizations. We'll start this chapter with a short survey of a few popular design patterns for Redis and then, provide practical advice on determining whether Redis is the right choice for you.

We'll then go through a detailed example of how Redis a legacy metadata format used by public and academic libraries – including some museums – to illustrate Redis's flexibility and power with just three data structures and an intentional key design. Finishing this chapter off, we'll touch upon recently added functionalities and commands to Redis.

Is Redis right for me?

A relatively common question posted to the general Redis e-mail mailing list, asks whether Redis is a good choice for a variety of uses, such as running reviews on a website, caching results from MySQL databases queries, or meeting other specific requirements that the poster might have for his/her project, product, website, or system. In general, Redis excels as a tool for a fast read/write of data and has been used with great success by small and large organizations alike for a wide range of uses. Salivator Sanfilippo makes a strong case that Redis does not need to replace the existing databases but is an excellent addition to an enterprise for new functionalities or to solve sometimes intractable problems1.

Being a single-threaded application with a small memory footprint, Redis achieves durability and scalability through running multiple instances on the current multicore processors available in data centers and cloud providers. With Redis-rich master-slave replication and now with Redis clusters are released in production, creating multiple Redis instances are relatively cheap operation in terms of memory and CPU requirements, allowing you to both scale and increase the durability of your larger applications.

Redis allows you to conceptualize and approach challenging data analysis and data manipulation problems in a very different manner as compared to a typical relational data model. In an SQL-based relational database, the developer or database administration creates a database schema that organizes the solution domain through normalizing the data into columns, rows, and tables with connecting joins through foreign-key relationships.

Is Redis right for me?

Even other NoSQL data storage technologies such as MongoDB or Elasticsearch require the data to be modeled as JSON document data structures first before being loaded into the actual storage. Redis skips this intermediate but necessary step in these other technologies, by just providing sets of commands for specific data structures such as strings, lists, hashes, sets, and sorted sets. In this approach, you are algorithmically interacting with your data, constructing solutions directly with how the data is stored in Redis and the available commands, and enabling a more direct tuning and monitoring of the underlying operating system's memory and hard disk space.

Is Redis right for me?

Thinking how data is represented and managed as basic computing data structures such as lists, hashes, and sets, allows you to grasp both positive and negative characteristics of the data and its structures in a more fundamental, mathematical fashion. Going through the intermediate structuring process such as normalizing your data for a relational database or converting it into a JSON document for MongoDB or Elasticsearch, while valuable, imposes a structure that Redis does not. As you architect your solutions, you may discover that your data and your problem need more of the persistence and structure of a technology other than Redis, but in the meantime, your exploration of the properties and the structure of data in Redis will be a useful exercise because of this algorithmic approach to your information and problem.

Redis may not be the best technology to use when you have a large amount of infrequently used data that does not require immediate access. An SQL-based relational database or a document-store NoSQL technology such as CouchDB or MongoDB may be a better choice than Redis. However, with Redis Cluster now fully supported as of version 3, large datasets can be sharded and used in Redis as a distributed key-value data store. As more organizations and individuals gain experience with the use of Redis Cluster, expect that this reason to not choose Redis for a project will fade away.

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Key benefits

  • Detailed explanation on Data structure server with powerful strings, lists, sets, sorted-sets, and hashes
  • Learn to Scale your data with Redis Cluster’s distributed setup
  • This is a fast paced practical guide full of screenshots and real work examples to help you get to grips with Redis in no time.

Description

Redis is the most popular, open-source, key value data structure server that provides a wide range of capabilities on which multiple platforms can be be built. Its fast and flexible data structures give your existing applications an edge in the development environment. This book is a practical guide which aims to help you deep dive into the world of Redis data structure to exploit its excellent features. We start our journey by understanding the need of Redis in brief, followed by an explanation of Advanced key management. Next, you will learn about design patterns, best practices for using Redis in DevOps environment and Docker containerization paradigm in detail. After this, you will understand the concept of scaling with Redis cluster and Redis Sentinel , followed by a through explanation of incorporating Redis with NoSQL technologies such as Elasticsearch and MongoDB. At the end of this section, you will be able to develop competent applications using these technologies. You will then explore the message queuing and task management features of Redis and will be able to implement them in your applications. Finally, you will learn how Redis can be used to build real-time data analytic dashboards, for different disparate data streams.

Who is this book for?

If you are a software developer with some experience with Redis and would now like to elevate your Redis knowledge and skills even further, then this book is for you.

What you will learn

  • Choose the right Redis data structure for your problem
  • Understand Redis event-loop and implement your own custom C commands
  • Solve complex workflows with Redis server-side scripting with Lua
  • Configure your Redis instance for optimal memory management
  • Scale your data in a distributed manner with Redis Cluster
  • Improve the stability of your Redis solution using Redis Sentinel
  • Complement your existing database and NoSQL environment with Redis
  • Exploit a wide range of features provided by Redis to become a DevOps expert.

Product Details

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Publication date : May 31, 2016
Length: 366 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781783988181
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Product Details

Publication date : May 31, 2016
Length: 366 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781783988181
Category :
Languages :
Tools :

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Redis Essentials
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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
1. Why Redis? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Advanced Key Management and Data Structures Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Managing RAM – Tips and Techniques for Redis Memory Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Programming Redis Part One – Redis Core, Clients, and Languages Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Programming Redis Part Two – Lua Scripting, Administration, and DevOps Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Scaling with Redis Cluster and Sentinel Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Redis and Complementary NoSQL Technologies Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Docker Containers and Cloud Deployments Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Task Management and Messaging Queuing Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Measuring and Managing Information Streams Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
A. Sources Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.3
(3 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 0%
3 star 33.3%
2 star 33.3%
1 star 0%
Deo nguyen Jul 10, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Good
Amazon Verified review Amazon
stefano Feb 16, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
Good content but horrible editing. Let me quickly grom the state of redis clustering options.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
JB Feb 08, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2
Feb/2019. Picked this up (ebook from packt site) as it was the newest publication listed at the Redis site. So far, I'm on chapter 3 and have found numerous errata and confusing examples. The book clearly contains some useful information, but I keep finding myself thinking "wait, that can't be right". I've found errors in the coding examples and errors in the text that seem to go beyond simple typo and make me question the author's expertise on the subject matter.Example1: In chapter 3, on memory management, the author is discussing the "rdbchecksumdirective" and indicates that this enables a CRC64 checksum to be added to the end of a RDB snapshot. The author writes: "Performing an RDB snapshot with this CRC64 checksum imposes a 10% increase in memory usage when Redis spawns a child process that saves the snapshot in the disk." ... wait, that can't be right ... why would memory usage increase by 10% when computing a checksum??? OK, so I looked this up in the redis config file. First, I did a google search for "rdbchecksumdirective" and only found hits related to the book. Why? Because it's actually "rdbchecksum" (ok, simple typo there). The actual redis.conf file indicates "there is a performance hit to pay (around 10%) when saving and loading RDB files, so you can disable it for maximum performances" - this makes total sense. There is a CPU performance penalty for computing a checksum - not an increase in memory usage as indicated by the book.Example2: In chapter 2, there is a discussion of the HyperLogLog type. [This is like a "set", but it doesn't actually store the members of the set, but is able to estimate the number of members (cardinality) without actually storing the members.] The author compares the cardinality results between using an actual Set and using a HyperLogLog. For a regular set, he adds elements 1..52111. Then gets cardinality showing 52411 (typo?) but then he compares this incorrect number to the estimated cardinality from the HyperLogLog of 52213. At this point, I don't know if the resulting math makes any sense at all being based on incorrect numbers.Example3: In a (simple?) diagram of a bitmap, he shows 8 bits in a byte, but then shows the Redis commands only using 1 (leftmost) bit per byte. Setting bit "1" (0-based) is shown to set the 1st bit in the 2nd byte. Bit "2" is shown to be the 1st bit in the 3rd byte. ... wait, this can't be right??? In the text, this is continued with and example setting bit 2445 where the author refers to it as the "2445 byte".So, I'd say this is a good book to get you going, but be prepared to fact check what you are reading.EDIT: Now reading Chapter 4 and need to lower to 2 stars. Continuing to find errors/issues.Chapter 4 starts diving into some of the C source code for Redis. In one paragraph, the author sees fit to draw our attention to 3 #defines which are internal states of the "AOF" mechanism - yet nowhere in the entire book does the author talk about AOF. I have no idea why the author would tell us that "REDIS_AOF_WAIT_REWRITE" is defined as 2. Basically: "See... there are these #defines... and this one is defined as 2!" ?And in the next paragraph... "redis.h defines nineteen different flags to set a bit to 1 using the << bitwise left-shift operator so that a client information can be represented in a single byte." 1) Why are we talking about some internally defined constants? 2) Why is the author explaining a bitwise left-shift operator? 3) How has the author managed to fit 19 flags into a byte?
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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