Redis Redux

Outside of working with Google’s App Engine Datastore and occasionally Amazon’s DynamoDB I have zero exposure to the NoSQL world. But I watch the space with some interest.

This week it’s been popcorn and fireworks. Some of the NoSQL community’s sharper minds have taken Redis to task, and rightly so, for having poorly defined (even undefined) behavior. Strangely, the Redis team appears to be in deep denial about this fact. Worse, they seem to willfully ignore the fundamental underpinnings of distributed systems, like the CAP theorem.

Bottom line for me: today, key parts of Redis are busted, or at least hard to reason about. Until its developers see the light, I’ll stay away.