Using joins in RavenDB

How can I use joins in RavenDB?

The short answer is that you don't, RavenDB supports no joins, since it isn't a relational datastore.

The longer answer is that instead of joining, RavenDB (like other NoSQL solutions) provides alternative solutions.

• Denormalization (read more on document based data modeling) - This is the recommended approach

  Consider the case of music tracks and artists. In the relational world, you will have a column in the Tracks table that references the PK in the Artists table. To show a list of tracks with their artists, you will join between the two tables. In RavenDB, you will instead store in each Track document a denormalized reference to the artist, like so:

  { "Name" : "Fame", "Artist": { "Id": "artists/294", "Name": "Irene Cara" } }

  Yes, you are duplicating data. It's trade-off. But you are not duplicating whole Artist instance. Just the values you need to show in order to process requests pertaining to Track.

• Client side joins Of course, you can load the Artist by its id when you load a Track. This approach can be costly when you use it to load a collection of Tracks, so it is not recommended.

• Server side joins RavenDB's extensibility mechanism allows you to extend RavenDB to handle joins at the server side (eliminating network cost from simulating joins). The documentation about Read Triggers contains an example of how to do just that.

When using denormalization, you'll probably want to look at how to make denormalized updates.