In redis documentation is said that: "Sorted sets are implemented via a dual-ported data structure containing both a skip list and a hash table, so every time we add an element Redis performs an O(log(N)) operation".
How can I prove it can be calculated in order of log(n)?
Related
I'm facing following problem:
I wan't to keep track of tasks given to users and I want to store this state in Redis.
I can do:
1) create list called "dispatched_tasks" holding many objects (username, task)
2) create many (potentialy thousands) lists called dispatched_tasks:username holding usually few objects (task)
Which approach is better? If I only thought of my comfort, I would choose the second one, as from time to time I will have to search for particular user tasks, and this second approach gives this for free.
But how about Redis? Which approach will be more performant?
Thanks for any help.
Redis supports different kinds of data structures as shown here. There are different approaches you can take:
Scenario 1:
Using a list data type, your list will contain all the task/user combination for your problem. However, accessing and deleting a task runs in O(n) time complexity (it has to traverse the list to get to the element). This can have an impact in performance if your user has a lot of tasks.
Using sets:
Similar to lists, but you can add/delete/check for existence in O(1) and sets elements are unique. So if you add another username/task that already exists, it won't add it.
Scenario 2:
The data types do not change. The only difference is that there will be a lot more keys in redis, which in can increase the memory footprint.
From the FAQ:
What is the maximum number of keys a single Redis instance can hold? and what the max number of elements in a Hash, List, Set, Sorted
Set?
Redis can handle up to 232 keys, and was tested in practice to handle
at least 250 million keys per instance.
Every hash, list, set, and sorted set, can hold 232 elements.
In other words your limit is likely the available memory in your
system.
What's the Redis memory footprint?
To give you a few examples (all obtained using 64-bit instances):
An empty instance uses ~ 3MB of memory. 1 Million small Keys ->
String Value pairs use ~ 85MB of memory. 1 Million Keys -> Hash
value, representing an object with 5 fields, use ~ 160 MB of
memory. To test your use case is trivial using the
redis-benchmark utility to generate random data sets and check with
the INFO memory command the space used.
I can think of two ways of checking existence using redis:
Use the whole database as a 'set', and just SET a key and checking existence by GETing it (or using EXISTS as mentioned in the comment by #Sergio Tulentsev)
Use SADD to add all members to a key and check existence by SISMEMBER
Which one is better? Will it be a problem, compared to the same amount of keys in a single set, if I choose the first method and the number of keys in a database gets larger?
In fact, besides these two methods, you can also use the HASH data structure with HEXISTS command (I'll call this method as the third solution).
All these solutions are fast enough, and it's NOT a problem if you have a large SET, HASH, or keyspace.
So, which one should we use? It depends on lots of things...
Does the key has value?
Keys of both the first and the third solution can have value, while the second solution CANNOT.
So if there's no value for each key, I'd prefer the second solution, i.e. SET solution. Otherwise, you have to use the first or third solution.
Does the value has structure?
If the value is NOT raw string, but a data structure, e.g. LIST, SET. You have to use the first solution, since HASH's value CAN only be raw string.
Do you need to do set operations?
If you need to do intersection, union or diff operations on multiple data sets, you should use the second solution. Redis has built-in commands for these operations, although they might be slow commands.
Memory efficiency consideration
Redis takes more memory-efficient encoding for small SET and HASH. So when you have lots of small data sets, take the second and the third solution can save lots of memory. See this for details.
UPDATE
Do you need to set TTL for these keys?
As #dizzyf points out in the comment, if you need to set TTL for these keys, you have to use the first solution. Because items of HASH and SET DO NOT have expiration property. You can only set TTL for the entire HASH or SET, NOT their elements.
I have a requirement to process multiple records from a queue. But due to some external issues the items may sporadically occur multiple times.
I need to process items only once
What I planned to use is PFADD into redis every record ( as a md5sum) and then see if that returns success. If that shows no increment then the record is a duplicate else process the record.
This seems pretty straightforward , but I am getting too many false positives while using PFADD
Is there a better way to do this ?
Being the probabilistic data structure that it is, Redis' HyperLogLog exhibits 0.81% standard error. You can reduce (but never get rid of) the probability for false positives by using multiple HLLs, each counting a the value of a different hash function on your record.
Also note that if you're using a single HLL there's no real need to hash the record - just PFADD as is.
Alternatively, use a Redis Set to keep all the identifiers/hashes/records and have 100%-accurate membership tests with SISMEMBER. This approach requires more (RAM) resources as you're storing each processed element, but unless your queue is really huge that shouldn't be a problem for a modest Redis instance. To keep memory consumption under control, switch between Sets according to the date and set an expiry on the Set keys (another approach is to use a single Sorted Set and manually remove old items from it by keeping their timestamp in the score).
In general in distributed systems you have to choose between processing items either :
at most once
at least once
Processing something exactly-once would be convenient however this is generally impossible.
That being said there could be acceptable workarounds for your specific use case, and as you suggest storing the items already processed could be an acceptable solution.
Be aware though that PFADD uses HyperLogLog, which is fast and scales but is approximate about the count of the items, so in this case I do not think this is what you want.
However if you are fine with having a small probability of errors, the most appropriate data structure here would be a Bloom filter (as described here for Redis), which can be implemented in a very memory-efficient way.
A simple, efficient, and recommended solution would be to use a simple redis key (for instance a hash) storing a boolean-like value ("0", "1" or "true", "false") for instance with the HSET or SET with the NX option instruction. You could also put it under a namespace if you wish to. It has the added benefit of being able to expire keys also.
It would avoid you to use a set (not the SET command, but rather the SINTER, SUNION commands), which doesn't necessarily work well with Redis cluster if you want to scale to more than one node. SISMEMBER is still fine though (but lacks some features from hashes such as time to live).
If you use a hash, I would also advise you to pick a hash function that has fewer chances of collisions than md5 (a collision means that two different objects end up with the same hash).
An alternative approach to the hash would be to assign an uuid to every item when putting it in the queue (or a squuid if you want to have some time information).
What is the most convenient/fast way to implement a sorted set in redis where the values are objects, not just strings.
Should I just store object id's in the sorted set and then query every one of them individually by its key or is there a way that I can store them directly in the sorted set, i.e. must the value be a string?
It depends on your needs, if you need to share this data with other zsets/structures and want to write the value only once for every change, you can put an id as the zset value and add a hash to store the object. However, it implies making additionnal queries when you read data from the zset (one zrange + n hgetall for n values in the zset), but writing and synchronising the value between many structures is cheap (only updating the hash corresponding to the value).
But if it is "self-contained", with no or few accesses outside the zset, you can serialize to a chosen format (JSON, MESSAGEPACK, KRYO...) your object and then store it as the value of your zset entry. This way, you will have better performance when you read from the zset (only 1 query with O(log(N)+M), it is actually pretty good, probably the best you can get), but maybe you will have to duplicate the value in other zsets / structures if you need to read / write this value outside, which also implies maintaining synchronisation by hand on the value.
Redis has good documentation on performance of each command, so check what queries you would write and calculate the total cost, so that you can make a good comparison of these two options.
Also, don't forget that redis comes with optimistic locking, so if you need pessimistic (because of contention for instance) you will have to do it by hand and/or using lua scripts. If you need a lot of sync, the first option seems better (less performance on read, but still good, less queries and complexity on writes), but if you have values that don't change a lot and memory space is not a problem, the second option will provide better performance on reads (you can duplicate the value in redis, synchronize the values periodically for instance).
Short answer: Yes, everything must be stored as a string
Longer answer: you can serialize your object into any text-based format of your choosing. Most people choose MsgPack or JSON because it is very compact and serializers are available in just about any language.
I am designing a system that should analyze large number of user transactions and produce aggregated measures (such as trends and etc).
The system should work fast, be robust and scalable.
System is java based (on Linux).
The data arrives from a system that generate log files (CSV based) of user transactions.
The system generates a file every minute and each file contains the transactions of different users (sorted by time), each file may contain thousands of users.
A sample data structure for a CSV file:
10:30:01,user 1,...
10:30:01,user 1,...
10:30:02,user 78,...
10:30:02,user 2,...
10:30:03,user 1,...
10:30:04,user 2,...
.
.
.
The system I am planning should process the files and perform some analysis in real-time.
It has to gather the input, send it to several algorithms and other systems and store computed results in a database. The database does not hold the actual input records but only high level aggregated analysis about the transactions. For example trends and etc.
The first algorithm I am planning to use requires for best operation at least 10 user records, if it can not find 10 records after 5 minutes, it should use what ever data available.
I would like to use Storm for the implementation, but I would prefer to leave this discussion in the design level as much as possible.
A list of system components:
A task that monitors incoming files every minute.
A task that read the file, parse it and make it available for other system components and algorithms.
A component to buffer 10 records for a user (no longer than 5 minutes), when 10 records are gathered, or 5 minute have passed, it is time to send the data to the algorithm for further processing.
Since the requirement is to supply at least 10 records for the algorithm, I thought of using Storm Field Grouping (which means the same task gets called for the same user) and track the collection of 10 user's records inside the task, of course I plan to have several of these tasks, each handles a portion of the users.
There are other components that work on a single transaction, for them I plan on creating other tasks that receive each transaction as it gets parsed (in parallel to other tasks).
I need your help with #3.
What are the best practice for designing such a component?
It is obvious that it needs to maintain the data for 10 records per users.
A key value map may help, Is it better to have the map managed in the task itself or using a distributed cache?
For example Redis a key value store (I never used it before).
Thanks for your help
I had worked with redis quite a bit. So, I'll comment on your thought of using redis
#3 has 3 requirements
Buffer per user
Buffer for 10 Tasks
Should Expire every 5 min
1. Buffer Per User:
Redis is just a key value store. Although it supports wide variety of datatypes, they are always values mapped to a STRING key. So, You should decide how to identify a user uniquely incase you need have per user buffer. Because In redis you will never get an error when you override a key new value. One solution might be check the existence before write.
2. Buffer for 10 Tasks: You obviously can implement a queue in redis. But restricting its size is left to you. Ex: Using LPUSH and LTRIM or Using LLEN to check the length and decide whether to trigger your process. The key associated with this queue should be the one you decided in part 1.
3. Buffer Expires in 5 min: This is a toughest task. In redis every key irrespective of underlying datatype it value has, can have an expiry. But the expiry process is silent. You won't get notified on expiry of any key. So, you will silently lose your buffer if you use this property. One work around for this is, having an index. Means, the index will map a timestamp to the keys who are all need to be expired at that timestamp value. Then in background you can read the index every minute and manually delete the key [after reading] out of redis and call your desired process with the buffer data. To have such an index you can look at Sorted Sets. Where timestamp will be your score and set member will be the keys [unique key per user decided in part 1 which maps to a queue] you wish to delete at that timestamp. You can do zrangebyscore to read all set members with specified timestamp
Overall:
Use Redis List to implement a queue.
Use LLEN to make sure you are not exceeding your 10 limit.
Whenever you create a new list make an entry into index [Sorted Set] with Score as Current Timestamp + 5 min and Value as the list's key.
When LLEN reaches 10, remember to read then remove the key from the index [sorted set] and from the db [delete the key->list]. Then trigger your process with data.
For every one min, generate current timestamp, read the index and for every key, read data then remove the key from db and trigger your process.
This might be my way to implement it. There might be some other better way to model your data in redis
For your requirements 1 & 2: [Apache Flume or Kafka]
For your requirement #3: [Esper Bolt inside Storm. In Redis for accomplishing this you will have to rewrite the Esper Logic.]