How Redis scratched an itch — and changed databases forever

Why would you ever write a new database? Particularly an in-memory database, which, back in 2009, made zero sense to the ruling database class of the time. Salvatore Sanfilippo didn’t really care. He wasn’t trying to change anyone’s minds about what a database should be. He just needed to scale a real-time analytics engine, and MySQL couldn’t do so cost-effectively.
So he built Redis, as one does, and changed the database market forever.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Remember when open source was fun? ]
In a series of conversations with open source project founders like Sanfilippo over the past few weeks, I’ve been struck by how often they started with trying to answer a specific need — an “itch,” in the open source parlance — but ended up changing the way whole product categories work. They weren’t trying to be clever. They were just trying to be useful.
To read this article in full, please click here