December 2014 Summaries

The Redis Lua Debugger, or rld, is a tool that helps developers debug their Redis Lua scripts more efficiently. It's written in Lua and runs directly on the Redis server, requiring only the script and Redis to use it. The debugger can be activated by calling its `start` function at the beginning of the script, allowing it to track execution and print information about the script's output. This results in a better understanding of what went wrong during execution, making debugging more efficient and effective.

We've surveyed 126 developers who attended AWS re:Invent 2014 to understand their database needs and existing deployments on cloud infrastructure solutions like Amazon Web Services (AWS). The survey found that the biggest challenge for these developers is performance, with scalability being a close second. Python is the most popular programming language among participants, followed by Java and Ruby. MySQL is also widely used, with over 70% of respondents relying on it. NoSQL databases are also in use, with MongoDB, Memcached, and Redis being the most popular ones. The main reason developers choose Redis is for its performance, with many citing speed as a key factor.

HotelTonight, an app for last-minute hotel booking, relies on Redis, an open source data structure server, to quickly sync reservations and vacancy information with a range of hotel reservation systems and users' devices. The app's Black Friday traffic peaked at eight times normal load levels, highlighting the need for real-time updates even under heavy load. Using Redis helps handle network timeouts and other errors in communication with customers' devices and third-party services like booking APIs. Additionally, it allows engineers to quickly add and tweak new features without building traditional database tables.

It is my pleasure and privilege to announce that our popular Redis Cloud service is now available on dotCloud's PaaS, allowing users to build their ideal application stack by combining the best-of-breed services of Google Cloud Platform. This enables developers to focus on writing code instead of worrying about operations, as dotCloud provides 24/7*365 monitoring, load-balancing, failover, and scaling for a seamless experience. By integrating Redis Cloud with dotCloud, users can benefit from infinite scalability, high availability, automatic failover, and top-stable performance, making it an ideal choice for building blazing fast applications.

In the world of software development, bugs are an inevitable part of the process due to the inherent complexity and human fallibility of writing code. Tracking down these issues requires patience, effort, and sometimes creativity, especially when developing Lua scripts for Redis, which can be challenging due to its embedded Lua engine. To gain visibility into your code's innards, developers can use various methods such as printing log messages to a file or using the List data structure to store and retrieve messages. Additionally, Redis' Pub/Sub feature can be used for debugging, and a full-blown debugger like Marijan Šuflaj's trick can provide a more comprehensive solution. By employing these techniques, developers can improve their ability to track down bugs and squash pesky issues in their code.