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Redis Labs: RU101 Introduction to Redis Data Structures

Introduction to Redis Data Structures

In this course you will learn the techniques and patterns to successful model various data structures to effectively and efficiently use Redis. Various mini projects will be used to create an event booking system for the Redis Games 2020 in Tokyo.

Enrollment is Closed

  • Course Number

    RU101

  • Self-Paced

  • Estimated Effort

    3:00/week

What you'll learn

RU101 is an introductory course, perfect for developers new to Redis.

In this course, you'll learn about the data structures in Redis, and you'll see how to practically apply them in the real world.

The course covers all of Redis's most-used data structures, including strings, hashes, lists, sets, and sorted sets.

Since Redis is often used for high-throughput, low-latency applications, we'll be sure to cover the time-complexity of the various Redis commands so that you can select the most efficient data structures to solve your domain problem.

You'll also learn about specialized Redis data structures such as geospatial indexes and bit fields. And you'll see how to model capped collections, perform set operations, and take advantage of Redis pub/sub.

Finally, you'll get an introduction to Redis's powerful Lua scripting capabilities.

What you'll build

To make the material interesting and practical, the course examples model a system for hosting the Redis Games, a worldwide sporting event! You'll use the Redis CLI to interact with the data models, and coded solutions will be provided in Python.

Course Outline

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3
  • Course Introduction
  • Data Structures
    • Keys & Expiration
    • Strings
    • Hashes
    • Lists
    • Sets
    • Sorted Sets
  • Capped Collections & Set Operations
  • Use Case: Faceted Search
    • Object Inspection
    • Set Intersection
    • Hashing & Compound Keys
  • Performance & Big-O Notation
  • Transactions
    • Basic Transactions
    • Optimistic Concurrency Control
  • Object Storage
    • Simple Objects
    • Nesting, Relationships, & Folding
  • Use Case: Inventory Control
    • Overview
    • Reservations
    • Expiration of Reservations

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6
  • Bitfields
  • Use Case: Seat Reservations
    • Domain Problem
    • Creating Seat Maps
    • Checking Availability
    • Reserving Seats
  • Publish / Subscribe
  • Use Case: Fan out
    • Syndication of Events
    • Filtered Events
  • Geospatial
  • Use Case: Finding Venues
    • Creating Geospatial Objects
    • Finding Venues from Another Point or Venue
    • Calculating Distances
  • Lua Scripting
  • Use Case: Inventory Control with Lua
    • Managing and Executing Scripts
    • Purchase Workflow
    • Reserving Tickets
  • Final Exam

Requirements

  • Web Browser: Firefox 39.0+ or Chrome 43+ (Internet Explorer is currently not supported)
  • Operating System: Mac OS X 10.7+ 64-bit, Ubuntu 14.04+ 64-bit, or Windows 8+ (64-bit)
  • Access to www.youtube.com and university.redislabs.com (i.e. non-blocked access)

Course Instructors

Alvin Richards

Alvin is Chief Product Officer at Redis Labs, and has held various executive roles, most recently as the Field Chief Technology Officer at MariaDB, Vice President of Product at Aerospike and engineering lead at MongoDB. He has worked with SaaS startups, enterprise storage (NetApp) and byte-code virtualization and containers (Docker). Alvin’s early experience as a software engineer at Oracle provided a springboard for his career success building and leading engineering teams across the globe.


Alvin holds a computer science degree from Thames Valley University and a Bachelor of Arts in photography from Nottingham Trent University, both in Great Britain.

Kyle Banker

Kyle Banker is Director of Developer Education at Redis Labs. He’s worked extensively in data engineering, is enthusiastic about data stores and distributed systems, and is passionate about explaining technology as clearly as possible.


Kyle holds dual degrees in English literature and philosophy.