Chapter 1, Introducing RethinkDB, explains how to download and install RethinkDB on both Linux and OS X.

Chapter 2, The ReQL Query Language, explains the basics of RethinkDB's query language and how to use it to run simple queries on the database.

Chapter 3, Clustering, Sharding, and Replication, explores the different techniques you can use to scale RethinkDB.

Chapter 4, Performance Tuning and Advanced Queries, gives out best practices to obtain optimal performance and explores more advanced queries.

Chapter 5, Programming RethinkDB in Node.js, explains how to interact with the database using the Node.js programming language.

Chapter 6, RethinkDB Administration and Deployment, teaches you how to maintain your RethinkDB database instance and how to deploy it to the cloud.

Chapter 7, Developing Real-Time Web Applications, explores how to develop a full-fledged Node.js web application based on RethinkDB.

To get the most out of this book, you'll need a computer or server running OS X or any other Linux distribution.

You will also need an Internet connection and administration privileges to download and install the database.

Finally, you will need a text editor to edit configuration files and write code. There are many freely available editors, such as Nano, Emacs, or Gedit. Choose the one you prefer!

This book is targeted at anyone interested in learning how to get started with the RethinkDB database. No prior database programming experience is required, however you should be comfortable with installing software, editing configuration files, and using the terminal or commandline. A basic knowledge of Node.js is recommended, but not required.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The default RethinkDB package includes various control scripts including the init script /etc/init.d/rethinkdb."

A block of code is set as follows:

r.db("test").table("people").indexStatus("name_and_age")
{
  "function": <binary, 125 bytes, "24 72 65 71 6c 5f..."> ,
  "geo": false ,
  "index": "name_and_age" ,
  "multi": false ,
  "outdated": false ,
  "ready": true
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

rethinkdb import -f data.json --table test.people
sudo pip install rethinkdb

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "You can do this from the Data Explorer section of the web interface by clicking on the Options icon and checking the query profiler checkbox, as you can see from the following screenshot."

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