RavenDB

Last updated
RavenDB
Original author(s) Oren Eini (aka Ayende Rahien)
Developer(s) Hibernating Rhinos [1]
Initial release2010;15 years ago (2010) [2]
Stable release
6.2 / October 2024;3 months ago (2024-10) [3]
Repository
Written in C#
Engine Voron
Operating system Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Docker and Raspberry Pi [4] [5]
Available inEnglish
Type Document-oriented database
License AGPLv3
Website ravendb.net
hibernatingrhinos.com

RavenDB is an open-source document-oriented database written in C#, developed by Hibernating Rhinos Ltd. [6] [7] [8] [1] [9] [10] It is cross-platform, supported on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. [6] [11] RavenDB stores data as JSON documents and can be deployed in distributed clusters with master-master replication.

Contents

History

Originally named "Rhino DivanDB", [6] [12] RavenDB began in 2008 as a project by Oren Eini (aka Ayende Rahien) [13] [14] and is developed by Hibernating Rhinos Ltd. [1] The company claims it was the first document database to run natively in the .NET Framework. [15] [16] [7] [17] It was an early document database to offer ACID guarantees. [8] [17] [18]

In 2019, Hibernating Rhinos began offering RavenDB as a cloud service named RavenDB Cloud. [19] [20] [21]

Version history

VersionDateFeatures added (partial list)
1.0May 2010 [2]
2.0January 2013 [22] Replication [23] [24]
2.5June 2013 [25] Projections; facet querying [23]
3.0November 2014 [26] Java API; Voron storage engine [27] [28]
3.5October 2016 [29] Clustering [29]
4.0February 2018 [30] Became cross-platform; available with a free license [5]
4.1August 2018 [31] Cluster-wide transactions [19] [31]
4.2May 2019 [3] Graph querying [19]
5.0July 2020 [32] Time series; [33] Data compression using the Zstd algorithm [34]
5.1November 2020 [35] Indexing attachments; [36] Hub/Sink replication with filtering [37]
5.2June 2021 [35] OLAP ETL; [38] Custom Analyzers [39]
5.3November 2021 [35] Concurrent Data Subscriptions; [40] Microsoft Power BI support [41]

System architecture

Data is stored as schemaless documents in JSON format. [6] [12] [7] [42] [23] [24] [10] Documents are grouped into collections, with each document having exactly one collection. [23] [24] [43]

Databases can be deployed on a distributed cluster of servers (called ‘nodes’) using multi-master replication. [6] [8] Some operations at the cluster level require a consensus of a majority of nodes; consensus is determined using an implementation of the Raft algorithm called Rachis. [6] Tasks are distributed to the different nodes in a balanced way. [6] [44]

Versions 1.0 through 3.5 supported sharding, but versions 4.x do not. [6] [7] [8] [23] [24]

RavenDB originally used the ESENT storage engine. [12] [13] [24] Version 3.0 replaced it with a new open-source storage engine called Voron. [27] [28]

Clients are supported for C#, C++, Java, NodeJS, Python, Ruby, and Go. [8]

Main features

Indexes and querying

Queries are expressed in LINQ or with a custom query language named RQL (stands for Raven Query Language) with syntax similar to SQL. [6] [7] [8]

Document extensions

Documents can be extended with other data types less suited to JSON. These extensions can be loaded, modified, and stored independently of the document itself. [42]

RavenDB Cloud

RavenDB Cloud is a managed database-as-a-service launched in 2019 on AWS, Azure, and GCP. The service performs administration tasks such as hardware maintenance and security for users. It features the sharing of CPU resources among the different nodes in a cluster to avoid throttling. [19] [20] [21]

Embedded instance

RavenDB can also be run as an embedded instance, a great option for smaller applications and proof of concepts, for instance.

From their Server: Running an Embedded Instance [51] page: "RavenDB makes it very easy to be embedded within your application, with RavenDB Embedded package you can integrate your RavenDB server with a few easy steps."

Licensing

RavenDB is open source under an AGPLv3 license. [6] It is available with a commercial license and a free license for open source projects, but it must be applied for. [52]

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References

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  4. 1 2 3 "RavenDB: Driving DX through DB infrastructure management". ciostory.com. Archived from the original on 11 October 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  9. ↑ "Hibernating Rhinos". hibernatingrhinos.com. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  11. ↑ Wallen, Jack (2021-01-06). "How to create a new database with RavenDB". TechRepublic. Retrieved 2022-11-22.
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  13. 1 2 "Hidden Windows Gems: Extensible Storage Engine". ayende.com. 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  15. ↑ "RavenDB Development: Finally, A Solid Document-based Database for Windows?". www.whoishostingthis.com. 2019. Archived from the original on 8 October 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  19. 1 2 3 4 5 "RavenDB Launches Managed Cloud Service". www.datanami.com. 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  22. ↑ "RavenDB 2.0 RTM". ayende.com. 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  25. ↑ "RavenDB 2.5 Release Candidate is out". ayende.com. 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  26. ↑ "RavenDB 3.0 RTM!". ayende.com. 2014. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  27. 1 2 "NoSQL for .NET: RavenDB 3.0 Takes Flight". visualstudiomagazine.com. 2014. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  28. 1 2 "NoSQL: RavenDB 3.0 erhält weitere Storage Engine". www.heise.de. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  30. ↑ "RavenDB 4.0 is out". ayende.com. 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  31. 1 2 "RavenDB 4.1 Release Candidate is out". ayende.com. 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  32. ↑ "RavenDB 5.0 has been released!". ravendb.net. 2020-07-24. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  33. 1 2 "RavenDB Adds Time Series Query Support". i-programmer.info. 16 July 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  34. 1 2 "RavenDB 5 Improves Distributed Time-Series, Document Compression, and Indexing". infoq.com. Aug 3, 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  35. 1 2 3 "An Open Source NoSQL Database | The History of RavenDB". RavenDB NoSQL Database.
  36. ↑ "RavenDB 5.1 Features: Searching in Office documents". RavenDB NoSQL Database.
  37. ↑ "Filtered Replication | NoSQL Database | RavenDB NoSQL". RavenDB NoSQL Database.
  38. ↑ "OLTP vs. OLAP Databases: The Challenges of ETL". Datavail. May 21, 2020.
  39. ↑ "NoSQL Database Documentation". RavenDB NoSQL Database.
  40. ↑ "RavenDB 5.3 New Features: Concurrent subscriptions". Ayende @ Rahien.
  41. ↑ "RavenDB Features 5.3: Power BI integration". Ayende @ Rahien.
  42. 1 2 "A document database for the .NET platform". learning.oreilly.com. Archived from the original on 2 November 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  43. ↑ "The Design of RavenDB 4.0: The Implications of the Blittable Format". dzone.com. 2016. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  44. ↑ "Review: NoSQL database RavenDB". techgenix.com. 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  45. 1 2 "RavenDB Adds Graph Queries". www.datanami.com. 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  46. 1 2 "SD Times news digest: New Relic One, WhiteSource for Developers, RavenDB4.2, and VMware's acquisition of Bitnami". sdtimes.com. 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
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  48. ↑ "Data Modeling with Indexes in RavenDB". www.codeproject.com. 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  49. ↑ Stevic, Milorad P. "Managing documents with NoSQL in service oriented architecture." Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management (OJAKM) 1.2 (2013): 105-115.
  50. ↑ "Data Points - What the Heck Are Document Databases?". docs.microsoft.com. 2011. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  51. ↑ "Server: Running an Embedded Instance". Ravendb.net. Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  52. ↑ Tannir, Khaled (2013-09-04). RavenDB 2.x beginner's guide. Packt Publishing Ltd. ISBN   978-1-78328-380-4.
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