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I'm not entirely surprised. CouchDB is very clunky and minimalist. And documentation is really, really horrible. The futon UI is a pain to use. I had to wri

I'm not entirely surprised. CouchDB is very clunky and minimalist. And documentation is really, really horrible. The futon UI is a pain to use. I had to write my own library for nodejs because all the existing code I found was terribly written and poorly documented. It just goes on and on. And I like the technology, I persisted and eventually learned to be sort of proficient with CouchDB. But I doubt other people will go to the same lengths.

bauchidgw 15y ago
ad documentation: i bought the oreilly couchdb book to get some decent introduction, and lets just say it made me doubt the editorial standards (if there is such a thing) of oreilly - a lot.
- colin_jack 15y ago
  Couldn't agree more, I was amazed that they were prepared to sell a book as bad as that.
- wisty 15y ago
  You can get it for free. It's basically a series of blog posts (by a number of authors) which tries to explain some of the technical workings of CouchDB, and a few neat things you can do with it. It's kind of deep, but not comprehensive enough, and doesn't really cover the basic practicalities very well. The wiki is much better if you just want to get stuff working. The book is more for background. The big issue is they don't seem to treat the documentation and client libraries as a really big deal. Look at a language like Python - it's nothing special, but it's great tutorial and documentation gets it a lot of mindshare. Heck, look at Ruby - it's Python with a bit of syntactic sugar, less libraries, and a slow interpreter. But its documentation (which is great, but offbeat) wins it rabid fans like DHH, who go on to make stuff like Rails, and it's practically a household name. There's some really neat stuff that only CoucbDB can do, but figuring out how to use it is just a pain.
perfunctory 15y ago
Pretty much my experience as well.
rdtsc 15y ago
> The futon UI is a pain to use. Interesting I had quite the opposite experience. It found it quite a bit better than any other NoSQL database UIs. Someone even copied it for MongoDB and stuck it on top of it. Why do you think it was pain? And what NoSQL DB UIs have you found to be better and why?
- wavephorm 15y ago
  Things like adding users, and restricting a database to particular users, was a nightmare to figure out. When trying to enter a view, you need to quote and escape your code and put it all on one line. It's really bad, no novice would even know how to do this properly. I had to write my own little slash/escape tool to do it right.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    I agree those are valid deficiencies. Some highlighting and code formatting for views would be good. Maybe a plugin interface for other syntax parsers, since, for example we use a python view server instead of a JS one. I am still wondering what NoSQL databases have a better admin UI. I feel that Futon is pretty good and was a factor in picking CouchDB over others.
  - cemerick 15y ago
    There's a dedicated view editor that provides standard textareas for editing map and reduce view functions, with a set of results shown below. Once you've clicked into a database in Futon, choose a view to inspect/edit using the dropdown in the upper-right. Couldn't be easier, really.

bauchidgw 15y ago

ad documentation: i bought the oreilly couchdb book to get some decent introduction, and lets just say it made me doubt the editorial standards (if there is such a thing) of oreilly - a lot.

colin_jack 15y ago
Couldn't agree more, I was amazed that they were prepared to sell a book as bad as that.
wisty 15y ago
You can get it for free. It's basically a series of blog posts (by a number of authors) which tries to explain some of the technical workings of CouchDB, and a few neat things you can do with it. It's kind of deep, but not comprehensive enough, and doesn't really cover the basic practicalities very well. The wiki is much better if you just want to get stuff working. The book is more for background. The big issue is they don't seem to treat the documentation and client libraries as a really big deal. Look at a language like Python - it's nothing special, but it's great tutorial and documentation gets it a lot of mindshare. Heck, look at Ruby - it's Python with a bit of syntactic sugar, less libraries, and a slow interpreter. But its documentation (which is great, but offbeat) wins it rabid fans like DHH, who go on to make stuff like Rails, and it's practically a household name. There's some really neat stuff that only CoucbDB can do, but figuring out how to use it is just a pain.

perfunctory 15y ago

Pretty much my experience as well.

rdtsc 15y ago

> The futon UI is a pain to use. Interesting I had quite the opposite experience. It found it quite a bit better than any other NoSQL database UIs. Someone even copied it for MongoDB and stuck it on top of it. Why do you think it was pain? And what NoSQL DB UIs have you found to be better and why?

wavephorm 15y ago
Things like adding users, and restricting a database to particular users, was a nightmare to figure out. When trying to enter a view, you need to quote and escape your code and put it all on one line. It's really bad, no novice would even know how to do this properly. I had to write my own little slash/escape tool to do it right.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  I agree those are valid deficiencies. Some highlighting and code formatting for views would be good. Maybe a plugin interface for other syntax parsers, since, for example we use a python view server instead of a JS one. I am still wondering what NoSQL databases have a better admin UI. I feel that Futon is pretty good and was a factor in picking CouchDB over others.
- cemerick 15y ago
  There's a dedicated view editor that provides standard textareas for editing map and reduce view functions, with a set of results shown below. Once you've clicked into a database in Futon, choose a view to inspect/edit using the dropdown in the upper-right. Couldn't be easier, really.