Given this example:
user:1 email bob#bob.com
user:1 name bob
Based on my research, all the examples create an "index" similar to the following:
user:bob#bob.com 1
My question is: wouldn't it be better to store it as "user:1"? That would eliminate the need to concatenate the string in code. Is there some other reason not to store the whole string? Memory maybe?
The question was specifically about storing the full key in the index or just a numeric ID which is part of this key.
Redis has a number of memory optimizations that you may want to leverage to decrease general memory consumption. One of these optimizations is the intset (an efficient structure to represent sets of integers).
Very often, sets are used as index entries, and in that case, it is much better to store a numeric ID rather than an alphanumeric key, to benefit from the intset optimization.
Your example is slightly different because a given email address should be associated to only one user. A unique hash object is fine to store the whole index. I would still use numeric ID here since it is more compact, and may benefit from future Redis optimizations.
Based on what you've conveyed so far, I'd use Redis hashes. For example, I'd denormalize the data a bit and store is as hmset users:1 email bob#bob.com name Bob and 'hset users:lookup:email bob#bob.com 1'.
This way, I can retrieve the user using both his email ID or user ID. You could create more lookup hashes depending on your needs.
For more useful patterns, look at the Little Redis book, written by Salvatore Sanfilippo himself.
Related
Let's say I have to store the following object in my cache-
{
student_id: "student123",
school_id: "xyz123",
class_id: "class123"
}
How do I design my Redis data structure in a way where I can retrieve the object by any of the ids?
I tried doing a HSET command: HSET student123 school_id xyz123 class_id class123 but this creates a hash for the specific student_id. I also want to make sure that the search is in O(1). Thanks in advance!
To clarify, if I have to search by school_id, how would i go about that?
You need to use multiple keys indexes to get O(1) in your queries.
Consider using other data structures as well. Take a look at Secondary indexing with Redis, how to have relations many to many in redis and this other article on many to many.
Say, using sets, you add the {student123, xyz456, class789} entry as:
SADD student:student123 "xyz456 class789"
SADD school:xyz456 "student123 class789"
SADD class:class789 "xyz456 student123"
You may think "this will increase my memory usage a lot". It does indeed. It is the usual trade-off between memory and processing. Relational databases also do this when creating indexes. But Redis will give you sub-millisecond performance, and Redis uses multiple tricks to optimize memory usage, like ziplists, see https://redis.io/topics/memory-optimization.
What mix of data structures is best depends on the specifics of your use-case.
Consider removing the prefix in your keys if they are constant, just be consistent on the order you place them in the value.
SADD student:123 "456 789"
Keep in mind that sets and sorted sets allow unique members only. If you use one sorted set for students using student ID as score: ZADD students 123 "456 789", and then add another student at the same school-class with ZADD students 235 "456 789" this actually updated the score for "456 789", it didn't add a new value.
I need to understand how one can search attributes of a DynamoDB that is part of an array.
So, in denormalising a table, say a person that has many email addresses. I would create an array into the person table to store email addresses.
Now, as the email address is not part of the sort key, and if I need to perform a search on an email address to find the person record. I need to index the email attribute.
Can I create an index on the email address, which is 1-many relationship with a person record and it's stored as an array as I understand it in DynamoDB.
Would this secondary index be global or local? Assuming I have billions of person records?
If I could create it as either LSI or GSI, please explain the pros/cons of each.
thank you very much!
Its worth getting the terminology right to start with. DynamoDB supported data types are
Scalar - String, number, binary, boolean
Document - List, Map
Sets - String Set, Number Set, Binary Set
I think you are suggesting you have an attribute that contains a list of emails. The attribute might look like this
Emails: ["one#email.com", "two#email.com", "three#email.com"]
There are a couple of relevant points about Key attributes described here. Firstly keys must be top-level attributes (they cant be nested in JSON documents). Secondly they must be of scalar types (i.e. String, Number or Binary).
As your list of emails is not a scalar type, you cannot use it in a key or index.
Given this schema you would have to perform a scan, in which you would set the FilterExpression on your Emails attribute using the CONTAINS operator.
Stu's answer has some great information in it and he is right, you can't use an Array it's self as a key.
What you CAN sometimes do is concatenate several variables (or an Array) into a single string with a known seperator (maybe '_' for example), and then use that string as a Sort Key.
I used this concept to create a composite Sort Key that consisted of multiple ISO 8061 date objects (DyanmoDB stores dates as ISO 8061 in String type attributes). I also used several attributes that were not dates but were integers with a fixed character length.
By using the BETWEEN comparison I am able to individually query each of the variables that are concatenated into the Sort Key, or construct a complex query that matches against all of them as a group.
In other words a data object could use a Sort Key like this:
email#gmail.com_email#msn.com_email#someotherplace.com
Then you could query that (assuming you knew what the partition key is) with something like this:
SELECT * FROM Users
WHERE User='Bob' AND Emails LIKE '%email#msn.com%'
YOU MUST know the partition key in order to perform a Query no matter what you choose as your Sort Key and no matter how that Sort Key is constructed.
I think the real question you are asking is what should my sort keys and partition keys be? That will depend on exactly which queries you want to make and how frequently each type of query is used.
I have found that I have way more success with DynamoDB if I think about the queries I want to make first, and then go from there.
A word on Secondary Indexes (GSI / LSI)
The issue here is that you still need to 'know' the Partition Key for your secondary data structure. GSI / LSI help you avoid needing to create additional DynamoDB tables for the sole purpose of improving data access.
From Amazon:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/SecondaryIndexes.html
To me it sounds more like the issue is selecting the Keys.
LSI (Local Secondary Index)
If (for your Query case) you don't know the Partition Key to begin with (as it seems you don't) then a Local Secondary Index won't help — since it has the SAME Partition Key as the base table.
GSI (Global Secondary Index)
A Global Secondary Index could help in that you can have a DIFFERENT Partition Key and Sort Key (presumably a partition key that you could 'know' for this query).
So you could use the Email attribute (perhaps composite) as the Sort Key on your GSI and then something like a service name, or sign-up stage, as your Partition Key. This would let you 'know' what partition that user would be in based on their progress or the service they signed up from (for example).
GSI / LSI still need to generate unique values using their keys so keep that in mind!
I'm new to nosql databases so forgive my sql mentality but I'm looking to store data that can be 'queried' by one of 2 keys. Here's the structure:
{user_id, business_id, last_seen_ts, first_seen_ts}
where if this were a sql DB I'd use the user_id and business_id as a primary composite key. The sort of querying I'm looking for is a
1.'get all where business_id = x'
2.'get all where user_id = x'
Any tips? I don't think I can make a simple secondary index based on the 2 retrieval types above. I looked into commands like 'zadd' and 'zrange' but there isn't really any sorting involved here.
The use case for Redis for me is to alleviate writes and reads on my SQL database while this program computes (doing its storage in redis) what eventually will be written to the SQL DB.
Note: given the OP's self-proclaimed experience, this answer is intentionally simplified for educational purposes.
(one of) The first thing(s) you need to understand about Redis is that you design the data so every query will be what you're used to think about as access by primary key. It is convenient, in that sense, to imagine Redis' keyspace (the global dictionary) as something like this relational table:
CREATE TABLE redis (
key VARCHAR(512MB) NOT NULL,
value VARCHAR(512MB),
PRIMARY KEY (key)
);
Note: in Redis, value can be more than just a String of course.
Keeping that in mind, and unlike other database models where normalizing data is the practice, you want to have your Redis ready to handle both of your queries efficiently. That means you'll be saving the data twice: once under a primary key that allows searching for businesses by id, and another time that allows querying by user id.
To answer the first query ("'get all where business_id = x'"), you want to have a key for each x that hold the relevant data (in Redis we use the colon, ':', as separator as a matter of convention) - so for x=1 you'd probably call your key business:1, for x=a1b2c3 business:a1b2c3 and so forth.
Each such business:x key could be a Redis Set, where each member represents the rest of the tuple. So, if the data is something like:
{user_id: foo, business_id: bar, last_seen_ts: 987, first_seen_ts: 123}
You'd be storing it with Redis with something like:
SADD business:bar foo
Note: you can use any serialization you want, Set members are just Strings.
With this in place, answering the first query is just a matter of SMEMBERS business:bar (or SSCANing it for larger Sets).
If you've followed through, you already know how to serve the second query. First, use a Set for each user (e.g. user:foo) to which you SADD user:foo bar. Then SMEMBERS/SSCAN and you're almost home.
The last thing you'll need is another set of keys, but this time you can use Hashes. Each such Hash will store the additional information of the tuple, namely the timestamps. We can use a "Primary Key" made up of the bussiness and the user ids (or vice versa) like so:
HMSET foo:bar first 123 last 987
After you've gotten the results from the 1st or 2nd query, you can fetch the contents of the relevant Hashes to complete the query (assuming that the queries return the timestamps as well).
The idiomatic way of doing this in Redis is to use a SET for each type of query you want to do.
In your case you would create:
a hash for each tuple (user_id, business_id, last_seen_ts, first_seen_ts)
a set with a name like user:<user_id>:business:<business_id>, to store the keys of the hashes for this user and this business (you have to add the ID of the hashes with SADD)
Then to get all data for a given user and business, you have to get the SET content with SMEMBERS first, and then to GET every HASH whose ID is in the SET.
I am trying to read up on best practices on DynamoDB. I saw that DynamoDB has two PK types:
Hash Key
Hash and Range Key
From what I read, it appears the latter is like the former but supports sorting and indexing of a finite set of columns.
So my question is why ever use only a hash key without a range key? Is it a viable choice only when the table is not searched?
It'd also be great to have some general guidelines on when to use what key type. I've read several guides (including Amazon's own documentation on DynamoDB) but none of them appear to directly address this question.
Thanks
The choice of which key to use comes down to your Use Cases and Data Requirements for a particular scenario. For example, if you are storing User Session Data it might not make much sense using the Range Key since each record could be referenced by a GUID and accessed directly with no grouping requirements. In general terms once you know the Session Id you just get the specific item querying by the key. Another example could be storing User Account or Profile data, each user has his own and you most likely will access it directly (by User Id or something else).
However, if you are storing Order Items then the Range Key makes much more sense since you probably want to retrieve the items grouped by their Order.
In terms of the Data Model, the Hash Key allows you to uniquely identify a record from your table, and the Range Key can be optionally used to group and sort several records that are usually retrieved together. Example: If you are defining an Aggregate to store Order Items, the Order Id could be your Hash Key, and the OrderItemId the Range Key. Whenever you would like to search the Order Items from a particular Order, you just query by the Hash Key (Order Id), and you will get all your order items.
You can find below a formal definition for the use of these two keys:
"Composite Hash Key with Range Key allows the developer to create a
primary key that is the composite of two attributes, a 'hash
attribute' and a 'range attribute.' When querying against a composite
key, the hash attribute needs to be uniquely matched but a range
operation can be specified for the range attribute: e.g. all orders
from Werner in the past 24 hours, or all games played by an individual
player in the past 24 hours." [VOGELS]
So the Range Key adds a grouping capability to the Data Model, however, the use of these two keys also have an implication on the Storage Model:
"Dynamo uses consistent hashing to partition its key space across its
replicas and to ensure uniform load distribution. A uniform key
distribution can help us achieve uniform load distribution assuming
the access distribution of keys is not highly skewed."
[DDB-SOSP2007]
Not only the Hash Key allows to uniquely identify the record, but also is the mechanism to ensure load distribution. The Range Key (when used) helps to indicate the records that will be mostly retrieved together, therefore, the storage can also be optimized for such need.
Choosing the correct keys to represent your data is one of the most critical aspects during your design process, and it directly impacts how much your application will perform, scale and cost.
Footnotes:
The Data Model is the model through which we perceive and manipulate our data. It describes how we interact with the data in the database [FOWLER]. In other words, it is how you abstract your data model, the way you group your entities, the attributes that you choose as primary keys, etc
The Storage Model describes how the database stores and manipulates the data internally [FOWLER]. Although you cannot control this directly, you can certainly optimize how the data is retrieved or written by knowing how the database works internally.
For a database I'm building, I've decided to use natural numbers as the primary key. I'm aware of the advantages that GUID's allow, but looking at the data, the bulk of row's data were GUID keys.
I want to generate XML records from the database data, and one problem with natural numbers is that I don't want to expose my database key's to the outside world, and allow users to guess "keys." I believe GUID's solve this problem.
So, I think the solution is to generate a sparse, unique iD derived from the natural ID (hopefully it would be 2-way), or just add an extra column in the database and store a guid (or some other multibyte id)
The derived value is nicer because there is no storage penalty, but it would be easier to reverse and guess compared to a GUID.
I'm (buy) curious as to what others on SO have done, and what insights they have.
What you can do to compute a "GUID" is to calculate a MD5 hash of the ID with some salt (table name for instance), load this into a GUID and set a few bits so that it is a valid version 3 (MD5) GUID.
This is almost 2-way since you can have a SQL computed column (which can also be indexed in certain cases) holding the GUID without persisting it in the table, and you can always re-compute a GUID with the correct ID and salt, which should be harder for users since they don't know the salt nor the actual ID.