CouchDB

“Apache CouchDB has started. Time to relax.” This is how users of the CouchDB database man­age­ment system are greeted each time they launch the program. For many system de­velopers easy man­age­ment of a database is a top priority. “Couch” is intended to be easy to operate and com­pre­hend for database layper­sons who have little to no interest in tech­no­logy. A number of intuitive, graspable elements and user-friendly op­er­a­tions make for a very unique open-source software, one in which the ap­proaches of document-oriented databases are connected with re­la­tion­al databases. What Apache CouchDB can achieve, how and where it is used, and what ad­vant­ages “Couch” can offer companies, we’ll explore in the following sections.

Databases are a very important part of running a business and are fre­quently used by software de­velopers. Customer data, product data, shipping, and payment data, and hundreds of other data sets form the “nervous system” of most companies. But the way the data is stored fun­da­ment­ally depends on the database model that is used. The tra­di­tion­al model for re­la­tion­al databases sorts datasets, for example, according to mutual relations. Non-re­la­tion­al models, which are also referred to as NoSQL databases, use other methods. One form of a non-re­la­tion­al database is, for example, the document-oriented database, such as the Apache CouchDB solution.

CouchDB is a databank man­age­ment system that takes advantage of the best aspects of document-oriented databases in order to achieve the per­form­ance of re­la­tion­al databases. Re­spons­ible for Couch’s de­vel­op­ment is the Apache Software Found­a­tion, which began working on the free software Apache CouchDB in 2005 and has since con­sist­ently continued to develop it.

CouchDB is com­pat­ible with the well-es­tab­lished operating systems Linux, Unix, macOS, and Windows and was developed in the Erlang pro­gram­ming language. The standard script language for access to Couch data sets is JavaS­cript.

Document-based databases such as CouchDB store data sets not in the form of tables and lines, but rather as in­de­pend­ent, self-contained documents. This could be compared to invoices, for example.

An invoice is a stan­dalone document that combines all relevant in­form­a­tion into a complete data set – biller, invoice number, recipient, price, items sold, biller, and recipient address are essential in­form­a­tion for this dis­tinct­ive dataset. In a re­la­tion­al database, this in­form­a­tion is divided across many different lines, which allows CouchDB to gather all this in­form­a­tion in a single document. The data must, therefore, not be struc­tured be­fore­hand. The structure is the result of the document itself. That’s why CouchDB can be un­der­stood as a schema-free databank man­age­ment system.

The document-oriented approach sim­pli­fies the de­vel­op­ment process con­sid­er­ably. Fur­ther­more, it enables those data sets to be collected as bundles that, though they are se­mantic­ally similar (for example, have the same file format), dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves in terms of syntax (with respect to com­pos­i­tion and internal structure).

An advantage of CouchDB is the quality of syn­chron­isa­tion of several databases, as efficient syn­chron­isa­tion is important for dis­trib­ut­ing data in a CouchDB cluster. In this way, the resulting data re­dund­an­cies relieve the entire system. Con­sequently, database requests can be responded to by different CouchDB au­thor­it­ies. Geo­graph­ic­ally dis­trib­uted, giant database networks are easily achiev­able.

When syn­chron­ising the database for different users at different locations, Apache CouchDB relies on an in­cre­ment­al strategy which has the crucial benefit of pre­vent­ing poor or dis­con­tin­ued network con­nec­tions from neg­at­ively affecting the syn­chron­isa­tion process. If there are con­nec­tion problems, the database solution continues where it left off before the con­nec­tion was disrupted. With respect to these instances, the de­velopers have em­phas­ised that the system doesn’t ignore these types of even­tu­al­it­ies and assumed that such errors can happen in everyday life.

Fur­ther­more, CouchDB uses the beginner-friendly JSON format (short for Javas­cript Object Notation) for the transfer and storage of its data sets. This format owes its existence to its schema-free structure, which – unlike with re­la­tion­al models – allows for un­struc­tured in­form­a­tion to be stored.

Users can also count on the simple operation of CouchDB, as it relies on current and well-known web tech­no­lo­gies such as REST, JSON, and JavaS­cript. There is nothing to prevent diverse usage that ranges from large server clusters to mobile end devices.

The de­velopers them­selves emphasise that they do not want to and are not able to supplant re­la­tion­al databases. Instead, they would like to position CouchDB alongside these and offer users a simple al­tern­at­ive. A document-oriented database is not re­com­mend­able or suf­fi­cient for every company.

For example, one must be clear about whether re­la­tion­al database systems are more practical and user-friendly for those who want to regularly edit their data sets in the form of invoices or other more complex requests. The reason for this is that they them­selves would have to install the ap­pro­pri­ate features in CouchDB, which would involve high costs and would require the ap­pro­pri­ate expertise.

As we’ve already indicated, CouchDB is a good al­tern­at­ive in the web ap­plic­a­tion de­vel­op­ment sector with many easy-to-operate features. In this regard, the de­velopers emphasise that other database systems are often adapted for the web, while CouchDB was spe­cific­ally made for it. For example, the database solution is used with many websites and Facebook ap­plic­a­tions. Fur­ther­more, it was used in the past by Ubuntu – probably the most popular Linux dis­tri­bu­tion – in order to syn­chron­ise bookmarks and addresses – another example of so-called “real-world data.”

CouchDB is com­pat­ible with all major operating systems and can be down­loaded from the de­velopers’ website. The procedure during in­stall­a­tion varies according to the system – under Linux/Ubuntu, the necessary steps look like the following:

First, update your Ubuntu in­stall­a­tion’s package man­age­ment and add the PPA re­pos­it­ory:

Next, update the package man­age­ment again:

Then install CouchDB with the following terminal command: