Redis is a BSD licensed open source data structure store (in-memory) that is quickly gaining popularity right now. You can use it as a message broker, cache, and database. Redis supports various different data structures, like hashes, sets, lists, strings, bitmaps, streams, and hyperloglogs. It includes replication, transactions, LRU eviction and various on-disk persistence levels, among numerous other interesting features coders loves. But, why use it in the first place?
A Redis server offers many advantages, but the following are considered to be the most important ones.
Over 512 MB Value Pairs And Key Storing
This is advantageous because the coder can build huge object values and keys, at the level of around 512 MB. The Redis Server can thus support a maximum of 1 GB of data with just one entry, which is a lot more than with other options available on the market.
Redis Hashing
Redis Hashing is the unique hashing mechanism that is utilized by Redis. Data is stored as a map with a key. For instance, string values and string fields. Details are stored with a different system that is very easy to use and actually minimizes the size of the database at the same time.
Data Replication
Data replication means setting up special master-slave cache nodes. These nodes listen to what is set up inside the master node. This means that if you update the master node, all the slaves are automatically updated. The slaves are asynchronously updated. Due to this possibility, it becomes easier to set up more complex structures that quickly get updated whenever it is necessary.
Uninterrupted Service
This is one of the biggest advantages associated with using a Redis server. Because of the fact that you can easily set up data replication with Redis, cache services are always running. It does not matter if a slave node goes down. All nodes are resilient and can easily overcome system failure as service is still provided.
Support For All Popular Programming Languages
The client APIs developed for Redis already support many of the very popular languages, like Java, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and C. You can see the Wikipedia page for Redis for all the languages that are supported right now by a Redis server.
Easy Setup For A Messaging System
With Redis, you can create a very good messaging application thanks to the pub/sub mechanism available. You are not restricted with the language you use for this purpose.
Easy Data Insertion
There are situations in which you need to load huge amounts of data inside the cache and this needs to be done very fast. With Redis, this process is very simple due to mass insertion, which is a special feature supported by the Redis servers.
Easy Client Implementation
The Redis client is communicating with the server through the Redis Serialization Protocol (RESP for short). The protocol is very simple to properly implement. Also, it is completely human-readable so it is very hard to get the implementation wrong.
Transaction Support
Redis servers support transactions. This means that you can execute commands in a queue as opposed to doing every single command one at a time. Usually, commands after MULTI are just added to a queue. After the EXEC is issued, commands are saved and will be quickly executed as soon as possible, one after the other.
Conclusions
Redis is gaining a lot of popularity right now because it offers a lot of support needed to develop caching mechanisms that are very efficient. It only takes a few minutes to build and even implement the effective cache mechanism. Also, you can make the Redis Server work with practically any application that is used these days. The result is always a cache system that is high-performing.
