In certain situations, you may wish to choose Redis over MongoDB when you decide which database to use. Find out when it is best to use Redis over MongoDB.
TL;DR: When choosing a database, there are a number of NoSQL solutions from which you can choose. Among these, both Redis and MongoDB are popular choices as databases for various applications.
Both databases have their strengths and weaknesses, so knowing these can help you choose which one will best suit the needs of your application. If you are considering Redis, when should you favor using it over MongoDB?
MogoDB Strengths
MongoDB excels when you are going to be storing and querying extremely large datasets. This is especially true if you will need to continually add more data to the dataset, as MongoDB make scaling the large amount of data a fairly easy task.
In addition, MongoDB is a good choice when you want your data organized as a document store. This allows for a hierarchical structure where you can have documents within documents in order to easily locate necessary data. For example, if you store a blog post which contains comments, the comments could naturally be subdocuments of the blog post content document.
An example of a MongoDB query. Source: MongoDB.
Redis Strengths
Redis excels at providing speed for a database where the size is generally well-known. It does this by placing the database in memory, which allows for high-performance caching and extremely fast location of the needed data.
Redis is organized as a key-value store, so you can quickly access data using the known key. This makes it ideal for applications that require real-time functionality. For example, if you display real-time stock prices, you can use Redis to rapidly get the latest stock price by its key and get it displayed to the user.
Not only does Redis provide key-value functionality, but it features the ability to use more complex data structures like scalars, sets, hashes, and lists. These are very similar to the same structures in many programming languages, which can make the learning curve a bit easier for developers.
An example of a Redis list. Source: Redis.
When to Choose Redis
In certain situations, Redis will be a better choice than MongoDB. Most likely, you will want to choose Redis if you meet most of these conditions:
With this in mind, you should be able to determine whether Redis will be your choice when compared to MongoDB!
Get Your Own Hosted Database
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With Morpheus, you have support for SQL, NoSQL, and in-memory databases like Redis across public, private, and hybrid clouds. So, visit the Morpheus site for pricing information or to create a free account today!
