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    Ongoing observations by End Point Dev people

    NoSQL at RailsConf 2010: An Ecommerce Example

    Steph Skardal

    By Steph Skardal
    June 14, 2010

    Even more so than Rails 3, NoSQL was a popular technical topic at RailsConf this year. I haven’t had much exposure to NoSQL except for reading a few articles written by Ethan (Quick Thoughts on NoSQL Live Boston Conference, NoSQL Live: The Dynamo Derivatives (Cassandra, Voldemort, Riak), and Cassandra, Thrift, and Fibers in EventMachine), so I attended a few sessions to learn more.

    First, it was reinforced several times that if you can read JSON, you should have no problem comprehending NoSQL. So, it shouldn’t be too hard to jump into code examples! Next, I found it helpful when one of the speakers presented high-level categorization of NoSQL, whether or not the categories meant much to me at the time:

    • Key-Value Stores: Advantages include that this is the simplest possible data model. Disadvantages include that range queries are not straightforward and modeling can get complicated. Examples include Redis, Riak, Voldemort, Tokyo Cabinet, MemcacheDB.
    • Document stores: Advantages include that the value associated with a key is a document that exposes a structure that allows some database operations to be performed on it. Examples include CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, FleetDB.
    • Column-based stores: Examples include Cassandra, HBase.
    • Graph stores: Advantages include that this allows for deep relationships. Examples include Neo4j, HypergraphDB, InfoGrid.

    In one NoSQL talk, Flip Sasser presented an example to demonstrate how an ecommerce application might be migrated to use NoSQL, which was the most efficient (and very familiar) way for me to gain an understanding of NoSQL use in a Rails application. Flip introduced the models and relationships shown here:

    In the transition to NoSQL, the transaction model stays as is. As a purchase is created, the Notification.create method is called.

    class Purchase < ActiveRecord::Base
      after_create :create_notification
    
      # model relationships
      # model validations
    
      def total
        quantity * product.price
      end
    
      protected
      def create_notification
        notifications.create({
          :action => "purchased #{quantity == 1 ? 'a' : quantity} #{quantity == 1 ? product.name : product.name.pluralize}",
          :description => "Spent a total of #{total}",
          :item => self,
          :user => user
        }
        )
      end
    end
    

    Flip moves the product class to Document store because it needs a lot of flexibility to handle the diverse product metadata. The structure of the product class is defined in the product class and nowhere else.

    Before

    class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
      serialize :info, Hash
    end
    

    After

    class Product
      include MongoMapper::Document
    
      key :name, String
      key :image_path, String
    
      key :info, Hash
    
      timestamps!
    end
    

    The Notification class is moved to a Key-Value store. After a user completes a purchase, the create method is called to store a notification against the user that is to receive the notification.

    Before

    class Notification < ActiveRecord::Base
      # model relationships
      # model validations
    end
    

    After

    require 'ostruct'
    
    class Notification < OpenStruct
      class << self
        def create(attributes)
          message = "#{attributes[:user].name} #{attributes[:action]}"
          attributes[:user].follower_ids.each do |follower_id|
            Red.lpush("user:#{follower_id}:notifications", {:message => message, :description => attributes[:description], :timestamp => Time.now}.to_json)
          end
        end
      end
    end
    

    The user model remains an ActiveRecord model and uses the devise gem for user authentication, but is modified to retrieve the notifications, now an OpenStruct. The result is that whenever a user’s friend makes a purchase, the user is notified of the purchase. In this simple example, a purchase contains one product only.

    Before

    class User < ActiveRecord::Base
      # user authentication here
      # model relationships
    
      def notifications
        Notification.where("friend_relationships.friend_id = notifications.user_id OR notifications.user_id = #{id}").
          joins("LEFT JOIN friend_relationships ON friend_relationships.user_id = #{id}")
      end
    end
    

    After

    class User < ActiveRecord::Base
      # user authentication here
      # model relationships
    
      def followers
        User.where('users.id IN (friend_relationships.user_id)').
          joins("JOIN friend_relationships ON friend_relationships.friend_id = #{id}")
      end
    
      def follower_ids
        followers.map(&:id)
      end
    
      def notifications
        (Red.lrange("user:#{id}:notifications", 0, -1) || []).map{|notification| Notification.new(ActiveSupport::JSON.decode(notification))}
      end
    end
    

    The disadvantages to the NoSQL and RDBMS hybrid is that data portability is limited and ActiveRecord plugins can no longer be used. But the general idea is that performance justifies the move to NoSQL for some data. In several sessions I attended, the speakers reiterated that you will likely never be in a situation where you’ll only use NoSQL, but that it’s another tool available to suit performance-related business needs. I later spoke with a few Spree developers and we concluded that the NoSQL approach may work well in some applications for product and variant data for improved performance with flexibility, but we didn’t come to an agreement on where else this approach may be applied.

    database ecommerce nosql ruby rails spree mongodb


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