Redis swallows RESP.app biz that made its database easier on developers
Acquisition of Ukrainian startup to help broaden appeal beyond popular cache
Database provider Redis has acquired RESP.app, a popular developer tool used to ease developer experience on the popular key-value database.
In 2020, Redis became the most popular database on AWS, according to research from systems monitoring firm Sumo Logic, in part down to the fact it is the go-to in-memory database used as a cache and system broker.
In the 2022 Stack Overflow survey, Redis was the sixth most popular database, used by around 25 percent of professional developers.
RESP.app was developed in Ukraine from 2013 as an easy-to-use GUI to access Redis databases and perform basic bulk operations, simplifying developer daily routines.
The Redis database is open source under the BSD license, with source-available extensions, an enterprise product and a database-as-a-service option available from Redis, the company formerly known as Redis Labs.
Redis has bought something of a one-man band in Igor Malinovskiy, a Python software engineer originally from Kharkiv but now based in Spain, who built the tools because of his own frustration using the command-line interface.
The RESP.app project created an admirable community that has contributed to the overall Redis ecosystem, Pieter Cailliau, Redis product leader, said in a blog.
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Features from RESP.app would be combined with RedisInsight in the fullness of time, Tim Hall, Redis chief product officer, told The Register.
"We're excited to have Malinovskiy join us and bring some of those assets that he's built," he said. "Together we'll look at the things that Igor built, why it was successful, and merge those experiences together to help developers feel powerful, solve problems quickly, debug applications that they're building for real time data and real time data access."
Although popular as a cache, Redis has been trying to broaden its appeal as a general-purpose database. Last year, the 7.0 release saw new modules designed to enhance consistency, boost machine learning, and bolster JSON document support in its core open source database.
Hall estimated that Redis was used as a cache 60 percent of the time and as a full-featured database for the remainder, although it was working to improve that ratio.
Fellow key-value traveler AeroSpike also had news this week. The company behind the flash memory and in-memory system has launched a managed service, saying Aerospike Cloud is supported by AWS's infrastructure. It improves efficiencies with a smaller server footprint to reduce infrastructure costs, the company claimed. ®