CouchDB: If you're looking for a quick and dirty document oriented database management system (DDBMS) look no further!
March 16, 2019
CouchDB: If you're looking for a quick and dirty document oriented database management system (DDBMS) look no further!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with CouchDB
CouchDB fulfills a nice problem for us: we use it to store time-series data for a test sensor network, and it is a great introduction to non-SQL concepts and technologies. After performing feasibility analysis on a few projects looking for a good, solid no-SQL solution, several platforms were examined, including MongoDB. However, for this particular project, MongoDB was simply too large for the Job, and no one on the staff had much experience with non-SQL DBMS's. So, we needed a small, powerful database that worked out of the box, and was easy to understand and therefore implement. The value proposition of CouchDB is its simplicity: It's easy to setup and configure and therefore easy to delegate to an IT analyst, and not worry about blowing project funds on hiring outside talent (usually). The Second proposition of CouchDB is that it is developer friendly: you don't need a salesman from XYZ, Corp. to pitch your development team(s) multi-grand licensing deals just to get it up and running: it's open source and works on all of the big platforms (i.e. OSes).
- Document oriented database management! This alone is worth it: being able to describe your record in a JSON document, and then index it is HUGE.
- You're able to store the SAME document in multiple database instances, and due to CouchDB's engine, it is not a problem.
- FAST: Accessing JSON is programmatically easy to parse, and therefore makes it fast to query and view.
- Fan Following: If you have used CouchDB in a limited role, and you are not a DBA, then you will blindly fall in love with it. If you're an old DBA that is used to such artifacts as Cubes, then CouchDB may represent alien technology and thus be susceptible to being over-looked.
- CAN be slow: But this is true of any database: Some queries just take longer, and that's a fact of life.
- Uses an awkward engine: it uses an older version of the Javascript engine, which leaves you exposed to vulnerabilities (allegedly).
- Price: With an internal development and support team, the cost of downloading, installing and configuring is very much cheaper than other, mainstream solutions.
- Speed of development: Getting Data into and out of this database is a breeze.
- Simplicity: understanding the mechanics of database management is very easy. If you understand JSON, then you can understand CouchDB in a few hours.
Open Source, and freely able to install it on any OS you desire (the big 3, anyways) CouchDB was selected for that, it's early-adoption of JSON and its mobile-friendly environment. Also, I have used it off and on in various non-professional projects, and it was really one of the first exposure to databases in my career