Working with databases does not have to be boring. RavenDB makes it easy!
Gone are the days thinking about how to accommodate your data in rows and columns.
Do you already know RavenDB? Great! Prepare to learn some new tricks in this Bootcamp.
Let's start simple.
In this lesson, you will learn how to install and start using RavenDB on your computer.
Let's assume that you are a developer who wants RavenDB running on your computer.
For production scenarios, I recommend you to check other online resources.
Don’t want to download bits and bytes? No problem! Point your browser to our public demo at http://live-test.ravendb.net.
Feel free to use our live demo for quick checks and verifications. But it's not recommended to use it for anything more serious. All data in the live instance is public! There are no guarantees about availability.
If you have Docker installed, run the following command:
docker run -p 8080:8080 ravendb/ravendb
Docker will now get the latest RavenDB version and spin up a new container to host it. Note that we run it in developer mode without any authentication.
You can learn a lot about how RavenDB works on Docker following the official documentation.
If you want to set up RavenDB on Windows, Linux, or MacOS, you will need to download it from http://ravendb.net/download. Make sure you are selecting the right distribution for your platform. You will get a compressed file that you can extract to a folder of your preference.
Now run the ./run.ps1 (or ./run.sh depending on your operational system) located in RavenDB folder. This will start
a console application in interactive mode inside a console application. The script
will open your browser and start the RavenDB Management Studio.
Pay attention to an error that might occur on a Windows 10 versions - script execution is disabled on this system while running - ./run.ps1 command
To address this issue open PowerShell with an administrator privilege and simply execute the given command.
Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
The RavenDB wizard will determine the right address for you. Let's assume in this tutorial it is http://localhost:8080.
Running RavenDB for the first time, you will need to do a little setup. Just need to answer the questions. More information is available in the official documentation
The RavenDB Management Studio was completely re-designed. We did a lot of work to make easier to use than ever.
To create your first database:
-
Select the
Databaseoption in the left panel. -
Click on the
New Databasebutton. -
Type a name for the new database (we recommend Northwind for this lesson)
-
Click on the
Createbutton
Congratulations! You just created your first RavenDB database.
But it's empty.
Let’s load some sample data into our database.
- Select
Databaseson the left panel - In the right panel, click on the name of the database you just created (that is empty for a while)
- In the left panel, click on
Tasks, and thenCreate Sample Data
- Click on the big
Createbutton
The Northwind database is the sample database that came with SQL Server; it has been used for decades as the sample database in the Microsoft community. We chose this database as our sample data because you will be familiar with its relational format.
Going to the Documents section (left panel), you will see that we created a
lot of documents for you.
We just launched RavenDB in interactive mode, created our first database, and loaded some sample data. But it looks remarkably similar to what you see in a relational database.
The data is shown in a grid format with the tables on the left.
If you click on any record, you will begin to see the NoSQL magic!
All RavenDB data is stored as JSON.
Using the Go to document feature (the text box in the Studio toolbar), go to
the document orders/101-A.
{
"Company": "companies/86-A",
"Employee": "employees/4-A",
"Freight": 0.78,
"Lines": [
{
"Discount": 0.15,
"PricePerUnit": 14.4,
"Product": "products/1-A",
"ProductName": "Chai",
"Quantity": 15
},
{
"Discount": 0,
"PricePerUnit": 7.2,
"Product": "products/23-A",
"ProductName": "Tunnbröd",
"Quantity": 25
}
],
"OrderedAt": "1996-11-07T00:00:00.0000000",
"RequireAt": "1996-12-05T00:00:00.0000000",
"ShipTo": {
"City": "Stuttgart",
"Country": "Germany",
"Line1": "Adenauerallee 900",
"Line2": null,
"Location": {
"Latitude": 48.7794494,
"Longitude": 9.1852878
},
"PostalCode": "70563",
"Region": null
},
"ShipVia": "shippers/2-A",
"ShippedAt": "1996-11-15T00:00:00.0000000",
"@metadata": {
"@collection": "Orders",
"@flags": "HasRevisions"
}
}It is very different from what we're used to in relational databases.
A document is a self-describing, hierarchical tree data structure which can consist of maps, collections, and scalar values.
RavenDB database stores documents, which are plain JSON
formatted data. We can aggregate related information into a common object,
as in the case of the ShipTo property which has all the shipping information.
In a Document Database documents are organized in collections.
Collections provide a good way to establish a level of organization. For example, documents holding customer data are very different from documents holding product information, and you want to talk about groups of them. RavenDB allows for a document to be stamped with a string value that will be evidence of its type (like "Customers" and "Products").
Documents that are in the same collection can have a completely different structures. Because RavenDB is schemaless, this is fine.
- Open the RavenDB Management Studio at http://localhost:8080
- Open the Northwind Database
- In the
Documentssection, explore all the collections.
The user interface is pretty simple. We strongly recommend you to try to create your own documents, edit them, and so on. You can create another database and load the sample data if you want.
If you are just getting started with document databases and want to learn more about document modeling, we recommend you to watch Ayende’s talk.
Let's move onto Lesson 2 and start querying.