Exercises in .NET with Andras Nemes

Using the Redis NoSql database with .NET Part 10: a higher level of abstraction in the .NET client

Introduction

In the previous post we started looking into a Redis .NET client from ServiceStack. At this point of time there are two recommended .NET clients for Redis with ServiceStack being one and StackExchange.Redis being the other. The single biggest difference between the two is that ServiceStack.Redis requires a paid licence above a certain usage limit. The free-of-charge limit is more than enough for evaluation and testing purposes but you’ll most certainly need to buy a licence for your production environment. Otherwise if your application exceeds the free limits you’ll start to see some exception messages.

ServiceStack.Redis provides three interfaces to communicate with Redis. In the previous post we looked at the most basic one, i.e. IRedisNativeClient. It provides a wide range of low level database operations.
Most of these operations map to Redis commands like GET, SET, SMEMBERS, ZADD etc. one to one. However, the methods require string and byte array inputs and the programmer is responsible for all data conversion back and forth which results in a lot of code to achieve simple stuff.

In this post we’ll go slightly higher with the IRedisClient interface. We’ll also see how to get hold of a Redis client from Redis client manager.

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Using the Redis NoSql database with .NET Part 9: starting with the Redis .NET client

Introduction

In the previous post we looked at how Redis can be used as a message broker. Messaging is a technique to enable two disparate systems to communicate with each other. Communication usually happens via data types that most systems understand: strings, bytes and the like. The party sending a message to a channel is called a publisher or sender and the ones consuming the messages are called subscribers or consumers. Any Redis client can subscribe to a channel and get the messages registered on a certain channel. A system that sits in between the publishers and subscribers, i.e. that can create channels, accept messages to those channels and funnel them out to the subscribers is called a message broker. Redis offers a basic but very efficient messaging service. If you see a need for a simple messaging solution in your system without the more complex features of other message brokers then Redis may be all you need, especially if you already use it as a database.

In this post we’ll start looking at using Redis through .NET.

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Using the Redis NoSql database with .NET Part 8: messaging

Introduction

In the previous post we looked at transactions in Redis. A transaction is a collection of database operations that are executed as a unit. The commands of a transaction are executed atomically, meaning that the process is not interrupted by an external operation. The commands either pass or fail together. Redis has at least partial implementation of transactions. We can start and execute transactions but if one or more commands fail then the other members are still executed. In other words there is no rollback mechanism. Redis also offers a concurrency check through the WATCH command if we want to perform the transaction on an unchanged set of resources.

Redis also offers a basic messaging system which will be the topic of this post.

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Using the Redis NoSql database with .NET Part 7: transactions

Introduction

In the previous post we looked at the hash data type in Redis. Hashes are key-value collections like dictionaries in .NET or maps in Java. For a given Redis key hashes can store multiple key-value pairs. Hashes offer a certain degree of object-oriented design where an object, such as a product or customer can be described by key-values like “id”: 23, “name”: “Unknown LTD” and so on. We can use the string data type to store the properties of an object as a JSON string as we saw before in this series. However, if you need to access the individual properties of an object then a hash can be a more suitable option.

We’ve now discussed all available data types in Redis. We’ll now turn our attention to transactions.

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