6 ms·

The Future of Apache CouchDB

137 points by jashkenas 15y ago

gr2m 15y ago
amen.
switz 15y ago
It makes me happy to see this.
rdtsc 15y ago
It felt a bit unfair that someone who hasn't contributed to a project in more than a year, declared it obsolete and urged everyone to move on (even if they were the original founder). Also the choice of Couchbase to use "Couch" in their product name while completely breaking API compatibility between Couchbase Server and Apache CouchDB is a sly move. All that left a bad taste in mouth. Good to see someone from Cloudant responded.
nestlequ1k 15y ago
Seems majorly confusing, and will potentially divide the community. Couchbase vs CouchDB. Can anyone explain the difference?
- espeed 15y ago
  Couchbase 2.0 is Membase Server (http://www.couchbase.com/products-and-services/membase-server http://www.couchbase.com/products-and-services/membase-serve...) merged with CouchDB, and as I understand it, Couchbase 2.0 more closely resembles Membase Server at the moment (http://www.couchbase.org/get/couchbase/2.0.0 http://www.couchbase.org/get/couchbase/2.0.0).
- sktrdie 15y ago
  I agree. This is getting overly complicated.
  - perezd 15y ago
    Its not that complex. CouchDB is the core technology that Couchbase and BigCouch, et. al are using to power their more "vertical" offerings, in various degrees. CouchDB is not going anywhere, and its a great standalone product.
  - mlmilleratmit 15y ago
    We're certainly hoping to reduce the complication by removing the boundary between (clustered) BigCouch and Apache CouchDB by making the clustering an optional and transparent part of the Apache CouchDB project.
  - re_todd 15y ago
    Yeah, this makes me want to learn MongoDB instead.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  potentially divide the community. Couchbase vs CouchDB Actually that would be a step up from the current situation, which is "Apache CouchDB" vs "BigCouch" vs "CouchBase".
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  I view CouchDB and BigCouch to be very similar since the client APIs and libraries are the same, so both have the same developer experience. Couchbase uses different client libraries and doesn't seem to have the language coverage that CouchDB and BigCouch do. All three are open source and you can build them yourself.
jamesbritt 15y ago
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427491 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427491
perezd 15y ago
This is where actual innovation is happening. I'm not at all discouraged by the FUD being perpetuated by Katz today. I have a fairly modest BigCouch deployment in production and I am very happy with it. haters gonna hate.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I have built and experimented with BigCouch several times (but never in production except for using Cloudant's hosted service). BigCouch is a nice project. Anyway, this is good news, and I thought that this blog post showed some class (i.e., nicely written, polite, etc.) For the first time, I did build Couchbase from source today (I didn't realize that it was open source until today), and the web UI is slick, and the official Ruby client worked fine. That said, I found the experience confusing because the Couchbase client page has a lot of CouchDB clients listed, and even though I know that the interface is different, I tried a few of them anyway - didn't work.
dieswaytoofast 15y ago
There are two issues be-deviling couchDB as it stood before, well, now - * front-end caching * back-end scaling. The back-end scaling is handled quite wonderfully by BigCouch (we're users, and pretty damn happy ons at that), but pretty much everybody rolls their own for front-end caching (lord knows, we did, with mnesia, and a bunch-o other erlang. My hope had always been that we would end up with some version of BigCouchBase, but that is clearly not going to happen. With Adam's post, the back-end-scaling issue is pretty much a 'taken care of' issue as far as CouchDB is concerned. Thanx Adam (and everyone else at Cloudant!)
smacktoward 15y ago
> Working with the ASF and the CouchDB community, we hope to integrate the core capabilities of BigCouch into Apache CouchDB. Hopefully this will put to rest the tired (and false) “CouchDB doesn’t scale” meme. This is kind of hilarious, seeing as how the whole reason why CouchDB (and all the other NoSQL databases) exist is because of the "MySQL doesn't scale" meme...
- janl 15y ago
  > This is kind of hilarious, seeing as how the whole reason why CouchDB (and all the other NoSQL databases) exist is because of the "MySQL doesn't scale" meme... It is also not true.
- Shamanmuni 15y ago
  Wrong, the whole reason why NoSQL databases exist is that SQL databases aren't always the best solution for any given problem. CouchDB in particular tries to solve different problems than MySQL does, or the same problems in a different way. You should learn about it rather than citing misinformed memes.
js4all 15y ago
For me Damien's announcement to abandon CouchDB landed like a bomb. CouchDB is one of the key technologies of our hosting service. It is a great to see one of the big players (Cloudant) to step in.

137 points by jashkenas 15y ago

gr2m 15y ago

amen.

switz 15y ago

It makes me happy to see this.

rdtsc 15y ago

It felt a bit unfair that someone who hasn't contributed to a project in more than a year, declared it obsolete and urged everyone to move on (even if they were the original founder). Also the choice of Couchbase to use "Couch" in their product name while completely breaking API compatibility between Couchbase Server and Apache CouchDB is a sly move. All that left a bad taste in mouth. Good to see someone from Cloudant responded.

nestlequ1k 15y ago

Seems majorly confusing, and will potentially divide the community. Couchbase vs CouchDB. Can anyone explain the difference?

espeed 15y ago
Couchbase 2.0 is Membase Server (http://www.couchbase.com/products-and-services/membase-server http://www.couchbase.com/products-and-services/membase-serve...) merged with CouchDB, and as I understand it, Couchbase 2.0 more closely resembles Membase Server at the moment (http://www.couchbase.org/get/couchbase/2.0.0 http://www.couchbase.org/get/couchbase/2.0.0).
sktrdie 15y ago
I agree. This is getting overly complicated.
- perezd 15y ago
  Its not that complex. CouchDB is the core technology that Couchbase and BigCouch, et. al are using to power their more "vertical" offerings, in various degrees. CouchDB is not going anywhere, and its a great standalone product.
- mlmilleratmit 15y ago
  We're certainly hoping to reduce the complication by removing the boundary between (clustered) BigCouch and Apache CouchDB by making the clustering an optional and transparent part of the Apache CouchDB project.
- re_todd 15y ago
  Yeah, this makes me want to learn MongoDB instead.
reinhardt 15y ago
potentially divide the community. Couchbase vs CouchDB Actually that would be a step up from the current situation, which is "Apache CouchDB" vs "BigCouch" vs "CouchBase".
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I view CouchDB and BigCouch to be very similar since the client APIs and libraries are the same, so both have the same developer experience. Couchbase uses different client libraries and doesn't seem to have the language coverage that CouchDB and BigCouch do. All three are open source and you can build them yourself.

jamesbritt 15y ago

Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427491 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427491

perezd 15y ago

This is where actual innovation is happening. I'm not at all discouraged by the FUD being perpetuated by Katz today. I have a fairly modest BigCouch deployment in production and I am very happy with it. haters gonna hate.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I have built and experimented with BigCouch several times (but never in production except for using Cloudant's hosted service). BigCouch is a nice project. Anyway, this is good news, and I thought that this blog post showed some class (i.e., nicely written, polite, etc.) For the first time, I did build Couchbase from source today (I didn't realize that it was open source until today), and the web UI is slick, and the official Ruby client worked fine. That said, I found the experience confusing because the Couchbase client page has a lot of CouchDB clients listed, and even though I know that the interface is different, I tried a few of them anyway - didn't work.

dieswaytoofast 15y ago

There are two issues be-deviling couchDB as it stood before, well, now - * front-end caching * back-end scaling. The back-end scaling is handled quite wonderfully by BigCouch (we're users, and pretty damn happy ons at that), but pretty much everybody rolls their own for front-end caching (lord knows, we did, with mnesia, and a bunch-o other erlang. My hope had always been that we would end up with some version of BigCouchBase, but that is clearly not going to happen. With Adam's post, the back-end-scaling issue is pretty much a 'taken care of' issue as far as CouchDB is concerned. Thanx Adam (and everyone else at Cloudant!)

smacktoward 15y ago

> Working with the ASF and the CouchDB community, we hope to integrate the core capabilities of BigCouch into Apache CouchDB. Hopefully this will put to rest the tired (and false) “CouchDB doesn’t scale” meme. This is kind of hilarious, seeing as how the whole reason why CouchDB (and all the other NoSQL databases) exist is because of the "MySQL doesn't scale" meme...

janl 15y ago
> This is kind of hilarious, seeing as how the whole reason why CouchDB (and all the other NoSQL databases) exist is because of the "MySQL doesn't scale" meme... It is also not true.
Shamanmuni 15y ago
Wrong, the whole reason why NoSQL databases exist is that SQL databases aren't always the best solution for any given problem. CouchDB in particular tries to solve different problems than MySQL does, or the same problems in a different way. You should learn about it rather than citing misinformed memes.

js4all 15y ago

For me Damien's announcement to abandon CouchDB landed like a bomb. CouchDB is one of the key technologies of our hosting service. It is a great to see one of the big players (Cloudant) to step in.