There are many ways to install RavenDB. Depending on your needs you can run it in the embedded mode, as a standalone server or integrate it into your ASP.Net application. When trying something new I like to start with a known working state. Therefore I recommend using the standalone installation of the RavenDB server for the first steps. Starting with RavenDB 2.5 there is an installer that helps you with the installation.
This post is part of the RavenDB series. You can find the other parts here:
- Part 1: Introducing RavenDB: NoSQL for .Net
- Part 2: Getting RavenDB Up & Running
- Part 3: CRUD-Operations in RavenDB (.Net Client API)
- Part 4: CRUD-Operations in RavenDB (HTTP API)
- Part 5: Designing Documents for RavenDB
- Part 6: Map/Reduce: A Simple Explanation
- Part 7: Indexes in RavenDB
- Part 8: Set Based Operations in RavenDB
- Part 9: Relations in RavenDB
- Part 10: Paging in RavenDB
- Part 11: Evolving Documents in RavenDB
- Part 12: RavenDB 3: The New Management Studio
Download & Installation
You can download RavenDB from Hibernating Rhinos. The page contains all the stable builds and may look a bit packed. Just use the latest build (the one with the highest build number) and follow the link “Download RavenDB Installer”. Save the file and then open it.
This is a simple click through installer who let you select the port and the location of the data store. To try it out you should use the development option and install it as a windows service. That will work even if you don’t have a license key or have no IIS server running.
RavenDB Studio
After the installation you can open your browser and enter http://localhost:8080. This will open the RavenDB Studio which is an easy to use administration interface to your database. Here can you manage all the aspects of your database and see what documents are stored. On the first opening it will not contain any databases and therefore asks you if you want to create one. You can either create a database right now or later. If you don’t specify one in your code RavenDB will automatically create one for you. To follow the examples you should create a database with the name demo:
You should check out the Tasks tab. That’s the place where you can find all the commands like backup and restore. And there is also the command to generate the sample data. When you want to find out how RavenDB works without creating a lot of data on your own you should use this command. When the sample data is created you find the entries in the Documents tab:
Next
You have now all you need to play with RavenDB. You can use the Studio to modify, create or delete the entries. In the next post I will show the CRUD operations from your C# code.
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