

Riak 1.1 Released - seancribbs
http://lists.basho.com/pipermail/riak-users_lists.basho.com/2012-February/007573.html

======
rb2k_
I love to go back to Riak every now and then and throw one of the bigger
datasets I have sitting around at a single node using Ruby. It is one of the
most interesting databases out there and it's a breeze to set up (especially
when compared to Cassandra).

It is kind of a shame though. Riak has awesome features, but some of them
(e.g. secondary indexes) are hard to use and documentation is somewhat
missing.

If you look at the official clients page (<http://wiki.basho.com/Client-
Libraries.html#Ruby>), you can see ripple
(<https://github.com/seancribbs/ripple>) but the page doesn't mention riak-
ruby-client (<https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client>) which was split from
ripple some time ago.

In theory, both of them support secondary indexes as far as I can tell, but
you won't find that feature in either readme. There are some specs available
that somehow describe parts of it though. I still don't see clearly how I
could search secondary indexes from either library.

The same goes for things like data vs raw_data and serializers (small
discussion: <https://github.com/basho/riak-ruby-client/pull/19>). While there
is a very informative screencast in Seans blog, there is no mention in the
readme file.

~~~
jbellis
Curious what you found so hard about setting up Cassandra. Counterpoint:
<http://www.screenr.com/5G6>

~~~
tolitius
I agree. Setting up Cassandra is simple. It is later when you get to things
like:

    
    
        mutator.setColumnOrSuperColumn( ... )
        mutationsMap = new HashMap<ByteBuffer, Map<String, List<Mutation>>>()..
    
        compound column..
        super compound family of super columns...
    

where it feels more of a senior project, rather than something simple as:

    
    
        curl POST '{"red":2, "blue":4}' http://127.0.0.1:8091/riak/laundry/shirts
    

Although CQL fixes some of the problems with Cassandra complexity [Thrift does
not even sound good in all 3 languages I know], I still believe it will be far
more "desirable" (as the real <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra> was) if
more forces are applied to simplicity and polish.

------
davidcollantes
For those, like me, who do not know what Riak is:

"Riak is an open source, highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed
database."

Source: <http://basho.com/products/riak-overview/>

~~~
Ixiaus
It's a distributed multi-node key-value store. They built it using Erlang (I
almost consider that, alone, a "feature").

~~~
nirvana
If it claims to be distributed and its not written in erlang, don't use it.

Well, that's the filter I use when looking at anything. If its not written in
erlang I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how it isn't really
actually a distributed system. Usually I find out that it isn't.

~~~
Ixiaus
While I _generally_ agree with you, there are some applications out there that
get distributed multi-node environments "right" without using Erlang. It's
just much harder to do because those problems are (for the most part) solved
BY Erlang for the programmer.

If something says it is parallel this, or concurrent that, _that_ is when I
filter it - thus far Erlang's concurrency model has been unmatched (in my
limited experience) by any other language I've used for efficacy and
simplicity.

------
rb2k_
Oh yay, I wonder how enabling Snappy on LevelDB changes the performance
characteristics.

I really liked the introduction of Snappy to CouchDB, especially for EC2
machines with their usually slow IO

------
ahi
I want to love Riak, but the documentation is a mess. At least the 'Fast
Track' is out of date and inconsistent: [http://wiki.basho.com/Building-a-
Development-Environment.htm...](http://wiki.basho.com/Building-a-Development-
Environment.html)

------
nirvana
Glad to see Basho putting out new releases at such a clip. I'm envious,
frankly.

It is really impressive how far Riak has come in the last year.

I don't think anything compares to it, and I think it should have an order of
magnitude more interest and users. (I think people just get scared off by
"erlang", which is silly.)

~~~
no-espam
how much does riak pay you?

------
jsavimbi
I'm very interested in seeing the new Admin console; is there a URL for that.
Finding the docs a little light.

~~~
cmeiklejohn
You can see a demo from Mark here:

[http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/01/30/Riak-in-
Productio...](http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/01/30/Riak-in-Production-
at-Posterous-Riak-Control-Preview/)

~~~
jsavimbi
Looks great. And reassuring. I just followed the instructions and restarted.
<https://github.com/basho/riak_control>

