This is basically a node.js stream api compatible wrapper around the redis protocol[1]. It's important that it's compatible with node's stream api because that means you can use it with all the other streams in node -- like piping to and from a file, an http request, etc. Since it's a stream you can send large amounts of data without having to buffer as much in memory. In the case of this module only a single command needs to be buffered at a time, while it can process many tens of thousands of commands per second. The wrapper is lightweight because all it does is process the redis protocol. It could easily be adapted for an http REST interface for redis, some data shuffling within redis[2], or whatever else tacking onto the i/o capabilities of node
1. http://redis.io/topics/protocol
2. https://github.com/tblobaum/redis-stream/blob/master/example...