3. Getting Started
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## 3. Getting Started

Learning a new framework is not always straight forward. In this section, we (the Spring Data team) tried to provide, what we think is, an easy to follow guide for starting with the Spring Data Redis module. Of course, feel free to create your own learning 'path' as you see fit and, if possible, please report back any improvements to the documentation that can help others.

## 3.1 First Steps

As explained in Chapter 1, Why Spring Data Redis?, Spring Data Redis (SDR) provides integration between Spring framework and the Redis key value store. Thus, it is important to become acquainted with both of these frameworks (storages or environments depending on how you want to name them). Throughout the SDR documentation, each section provides links to resources relevant however, it is best to become familiar with these topics beforehand.

### 3.1.1 Knowing Spring

Spring Data uses heavily Spring framework's core functionality, such as the IoC container, resource abstract or AOP infrastructure. While it is not important to know the Spring APIs, understanding the concepts behind them is. At a minimum, the idea behind IoC should be familiar. That being said, the more knowledge one has about the Spring, the faster she will pick up Spring Data Redis. Besides the very comprehensive (and sometimes disarming) documentation that explains in detail the Spring Framework, there are a lot of articles, blog entries and books on the matter - take a look at the Spring framework home page for more information. In general, this should be the starting point for developers wanting to try Spring DR.

### 3.1.2 Knowing NoSQL and Key Value stores

NoSQL stores have taken the storage world by storm. It is a vast domain with a plethora of solutions, terms and patterns (to make things worse even the term itself has multiple meanings). While some of the principles are common, it is crucial that the user is familiar to some degree with the stores supported by SDR. The best way to get acquainted with these solutions is to read their documentation and follow their examples - it usually doesn't take more then 5-10 minutes to go through them and if you are coming from an RDMBS-only background many times these exercises can be an eye opener.

### 3.1.3 Trying Out The Samples

One can find various samples for key value stores in the dedicated example repo, at http://github.com/SpringSource/spring-data-keyvalue-examples. For Spring Data Redis, of interest is the `retwisj` sample, a Twitter-clone built on top of Redis which can be run locally or be deployed into the cloud. See its documentation, the following blog entry or the live instance for more information.

## 3.2 Need Help?

If you encounter issues or you are just looking for advice, feel free to use one of the links below:

### 3.2.1 Community Support

The Spring Data forum is a message board for all Spring Data (not just Redis) users to share information and help each other. Note that registration is needed only for posting.

### 3.2.2 Professional Support

Professional, from-the-source support, with guaranteed response time, is available from SpringSource, the company behind Spring Data and Spring.

## 3.3 Following Development

For information on the Spring Data source code repository, nightly builds and snapshot artifacts please see the Spring Data home page.

You can help make Spring Data best serve the needs of the Spring community by interacting with developers through the Spring Community forums.

If you encounter a bug or want to suggest an improvement, please create a ticket on the Spring Data issue tracker.

To stay up to date with the latest news and announcements in the Spring eco system, subscribe to the Spring Community Portal.

Lastly, you can follow the SpringSource Data blog or the project team on Twitter (Jennifer)

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