Design Redis database table like SQL?

With just 6 principles (which I collected here), it is very easy for a SQL minded person to adapt herself to Redis approach. Briefly they are:

1. The most important thing is that, don't be afraid to generate lots of key-value pairs. So feel free to store each row of the table in a different key.
2. Use Redis' hash map data type
3. Form key name from primary key values of the table by a separator (such as ":")
4. Store the remaining fields as a hash
5. When you want to query a single row, directly form the key and retrieve its results
6. When you want to query a range, use wild char "*" towards your key.

The link just gives a simple table example and how to model it in Redis. Following those 6 principles you can continue to think like you do for normal tables. (Of course without some not-so-relevant concepts as CRUD, constraints, relations, etc.)

Redis, like other NoSQL datastores, has different requirements based on what you are going to be doing.

Redis has several data structures that could be useful depending on your need. For example, given your desire for a select * from student where name = 'xxx' you could use a Redis hash.

redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hmset student:xxx id 1 college nnn address xn
OK
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> hgetall student:xxx
1) "id"
2) "1"
3) "college"
4) "nnn"
5) "address"
6) "xn"

If you have other queries though, like you want to do the same thing but select on where college = 'nnn' then you are going to have to denormalize your data. Denormalization is usually a bad thing in SQL, but in NoSQL it is very common.

If your primary query will be against the name, but you may need to query against the college, then you might do something like adding a set in addition to the hashes.

redis 127.0.0.1:6379> sadd college:nnn student:xxx
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> smembers college:nnn
1) "student:xxx"

With your data structured like this, if you wanted to find all information for names going to college xn, you would first select the set, then select each hash based on the name returned in the set.

Your requirements will generally drive the design and the structures you use.