here at rapidrabbit we deliver many 1,000 requests per second. doing this while only using a handful of servers and ruby on rails we employ very clever caching using redis and nginx. once the cache is written, it is directly accessed by nginx via a module, which makes it around 500-2,000 times faster than any rails controller.

Bypassing the slowest component in your stack by using caching might be a good idea. But then you need to answer how you control the lifecycle of your cached data. Taking inspiration from HTTP declarative caching mechanisms could be a start.

Original title and link: High Performance Rails Caching with Redis and nginx (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

via: http://over9000.org/rails/high-performance-rails-caching-with-redis-and-nginx

I used before the word geeky for the Smalltalk and CouchDB or the Smalltalk client for Riak. But this story is the real geeky thing. You must read it to believe me:

My cat likes to drink fresh and cold water directly from the faucet. We get up and turn on the faucet only to leave it running after she’s jumped down. It’s not really a big problem for us but I saw a fun problem that I could work on. As much as this seems like a weird and freakish oddity, it’s a potential start of a smarthome sensor network that may provide some utility. I also saw an opportunity to learn various things such as MongoDB, mechanical construction with Microrax, Rails3 and more development on Arduino with an Xbee module.

All parts of the project are described in detail, so even if you are not a cat person I still think you’ll enjoy it.

Original title and link: Arduino Cat Faucet With Mongodb and Rails (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://squarism.com/2011/03/09/arduino-cat-faucet-with-mongodb-and-rails/

A bunch of Rails addons to enhance Mongoid mapped models timestamps, versioning, history, tagging, search, geo, tree, etc. — note how many of these libraries are calling themselves mapping tools or even ORMs and ask yourself if indeed there’s no impedance mismatch:

This is all made possible by the fact that MongoDB documents don’t need a schema and that mongoid has a very simple callback mechanism that can invoke your function when an object is created, modified or destroyed.

The reverse of the coin is that the more you add the more magic is happening behind the scenes. And magic doesn’t usually play well with performance.

Original title and link: Rails Extensions for MongoDB Mongoid (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://code.dblock.org/ShowPost.aspx?id=210

Now, whenever we need to pass a message to the XMPP server from the webapp, we stick it into a special Redis list. The proxy-component is now connected to the XMPP server and also connected to Redis. Using Redis’ BLPOP feature, the proxy-component ‘listens’ to the list, and forwards any new messages to the XMPP server. BLPOP is especially suited for this setup since it blocks the redis connection till a new item shows up in the list, making it quite zippy (otherwise you’d have to poll the list every few seconds, not as great or fast). 

Why not using Redis Pub/Sub?

Original title and link: Rails to XMPP with Redis (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://blog.receivd.com/stack-glue-using-nodejs-redis

There are several cases in which it might make sense to tailor your app’s content based on a user’s physical location. But asking them directly is a bit of a pain. Luckily, it’s extremely simple to find a user’s location knowing only something you will always know about a visitor: their IP address. Today I’ll walk you through how to use IPs to geolocate your visitors in a Rails application using Geokit and MongoDB’s geospatial indexing with MongoMapper.

And a couple of days ago it was Rails with Geocoder and MongoDB with Mongoid.

Original title and link: Easy IP Geotargeting with Geokit and MongoMapper (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://intridea.com/2011/4/6/easy-ip-geotargeting-with-geokit-and-mongomapper

‘Geolocation’ seems to be the best dish being served today. Every web-portal, every mobile app wants to be sensitive to a persons location. Everyone wants to see information that is ‘relative’ or location sensitive. Whether its a deal portal, travel portal, social network – giving users information that is relevant to their location bring not only a personalized touch but also keeps tuned in to the portal.

Combining Rails with Geocoder, MongoDB with Mongoid and mongoid-geo, and Google Maps Javascript API.

Original title and link: Geolocation, Rails and MongoDB- a recipe for success (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://blog.joshsoftware.com/2011/04/13/geolocation-rails-and-mongodb-a-receipe-for-success/

TL;DR: Redis is fucking awesome.

Title and quote says it all. Added to the getting started with NoSQL guides.

Original title and link: Using Redis with Ruby on Rails (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://jimneath.org/2011/03/24/using-redis-with-ruby-on-rails.html

When asked why MongoDB is using their own query language instead of SQL, the answer was that using JSON for both data and queries made more sense. Plus, it helped avoid injection attacks. As showed by Patrick McKenzie’s post on recently released Diaspora, turns out this is not quite true:

Diaspora uses MongoDB, one of the new sexy NoSQL database options. I use a few myself. They have a few decades less experience getting exploited than the old relational databases you know and love, so let’s start: I claim this above code snippet gives me full read access to the database, including to serialized encryption keys.

The conclusion is quite obvious: as long as developers continue to use string concatenation and interpolation, the query language doesn’t really matter. So you might be better off with something that people feel familiar with.

Original title and link: MongoDB and Security via Diaspora (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/09/22/security-lessons-learned-from-the-diaspora-launch/