The book will help you understand the fundamentals of each database, and understand how their functionalities differ, while still giving you a common result – a database solution with speed, high performance, and accuracy.
If you are a budding DBA or a developer who wants to get started with the fundamentals of NoSQL databases, this book is for you. Relational DBAs who want to get insights into the various offerings of the popular NoSQL databases will also find this book to be very useful.
Chapter 1, Introduction to NoSQL Databases, introduces the topic of NoSQL and distributed databases. The design principles and trade-offs involved in NoSQL database design are described. These design principles provide context around why individual databases covered in the following chapters are designed in a particular way and what constraints they are trying to optimize for.
Chapter 2, MongoDB, covers installation and basic CRUD operations. High-level concepts such as indexing allow you to speed up database operations, sharding, and replication. Also, it covers data models, which help us with application database design.
Chapter 3, Neo4j, introduces the Neo4j graph database. It discusses Neo4j's architecture, use cases, administration, and application development.
Chapter 4, Redis, discusses the Redis data store. Redis’ unique architecture and behavior will be discussed, as well as installation, application development, and server-side scripting with Lua.
Chapter 5, Cassandra, introduces the Cassandra database. Cassandra’s highly-available, eventually consistent design will be discussed along with the appropriate use cases. Known anti-patterns will also be presented, as well as production-level configuration, administration, and application development.
Chapter 6, HBase, introduces HBase, that is, the Hadoop Database. Inspired by Google's Bigtable, HBase is a widely deployed key-value store today. This chapter covers HBase's architectural internals, data model, and API.
Chapter 7, DynamoDB, covers how to set up a local and AWS DynamoDB service and perform CRUD operations. It also covers how to deal with partition keys, sort keys, and secondary indexes. It covers various advantages and disadvantages of DynamoDB over other databases, which makes it easy for developers to choose a database for an application.
Chapter 8, InfluxDB, describes InfluxDB and its key concepts and terms. It also covers InfluxDB installation and configuration. It explores the query language and APIs. It helps you set up Telegraf and Kapacitor as an InfluxDB ecosystem's key components to collect and process data. At the end of the chapter, you will also find information about InfluxDB operations.
This book assumes that you have access to hardware on which you can install, configure, and code against a database instance. Having elevated admin or sudo privileges on the aforementioned machine will be essential to carrying out some of the tasks described.
Some of the NoSQL databases discussed will only run on a Linux-based operating system. Therefore, prior familiarity with Linux is recommended. As OS-specific system administration is not within the scope of this book, readers who are new to Linux may find value in seeking out a separate tutorial prior to attempting some of the examples.
The Java Virtual Machine (JVM)-based NoSQL databases will require a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to be installed. Do note that some of them may require a specific version of the JRE to function properly. This will necessitate updating or installing a new JRE, depending on the database.
The Java coding examples will be easier to do from within an Integrated Developer Envorinment (IDE), with Maven installed for dependency management. You may need to look up additional resources to ensure that these components are configured properly.
In Chapter 6, HBase, you can install the Hortonworks sandbox to get a small HBase cluster set up on your laptop. The sandbox can be installed for free from https://hortonworks.com/products/sandbox/.
In Chapter 8, InfluxDB, to run the examples you will need to install InfluxDB in a UNIX or Linux environment. In order to run different InfluxDB API client examples, you also need to install a programming language environment and related InfluxDB client packages:
- Run the InfluxDB Java client: Install JDK and an editor (Eclipse or IntelliJ).
- Run the InfluxDB Python client: Install Python.
- Run the InfluxDB Go client: Install Go and the InfluxDB Go client; you can use JetBrains Goland to run the Go code.
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
- Log in or register at www.packtpub.com.
- Select the
SUPPORTtab. - Click on
Code Downloads & Errata. - Enter the name of the book in the
Searchbox and follow the onscreen instructions.
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
- WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
- Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
- 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux
The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Seven-NoSQL-Databases-in-a-Week. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.
We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/SevenNoSQLDatabasesinaWeek_ColorImages.pdf.
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Now is also a good time to change the initial password. Neo4j installs with a single default admin username and password of neo4j/neo4j."
A block of code is set as follows:
# Paths of directories in the installation. #dbms.directories.data=data #dbms.directories.plugins=plugins #dbms.directories.certificates=certificates #dbms.directories.logs=logs #dbms.directories.lib=lib #dbms.directories.run=run
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
# Paths of directories in the installation. #dbms.directories.data=data #dbms.directories.plugins=plugins #dbms.directories.certificates=certificates #dbms.directories.logs=logs #dbms.directories.lib=lib #dbms.directories.run=run
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
sudo mkdir /local sudo chown $USER:$USER /local cd /local mv ~/Downloads/neo4j-community-3.3.3-unix.tar.gz .
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "To create a table, click on the Create table button. This will take you to the Create table screen."
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