Beefed-up Couchbase Server 3.0 beta targets developers and admins
Open-source NoSQL firm Couchbase says new features in the Server 3.0 beta released today strengthen the database's core architecture and also make life easier for developers and admins.
The company is justifying its description of Couchbase Server 3.0 beta as the most significant release of the document-oriented database to date by pointing to the addition of on-the-fly tunable memory and the stream-based Database Change Protocol, or DCP, designed to cut latency.
But it is also highlighting a number of improvements aimed at giving the database enterprise-quality administration and enabling developers to create apps based on Couchbase.
"In addition to foundational changes, like the advanced stream-based protocol and tunable memory, which improve performance and enable Couchbase to support many new use cases, we have dramatically improved the developer experience making it easier to build and extend applications built on Couchbase," Couchbase VP products and engineering Ravi Mayuram said in a statement.
The stream-based DCP improves speeds by removing bottlenecks, and helps the way increased memory and network capabilities are used, according to Couchbase. Among other benefits, it lists better view performance and the immediate streaming and rapid indexing of changes made to documents to enable data queries at near real-time speeds.
DCP is also attributed with the ability to cut latency for Couchbase Cross Data Center Replication, or XDCR, by replicating data, memory to memory, from the source cluster to the destination cluster.
Couchbase Server 3.0 beta's tunable memory allows admins to opt to keep all data in memory for fast response times, or just to retain a subset.
"This new capability gives Couchbase Server the power to support very large datasets efficiently and cost-effectively, and makes it possible for Couchbase Server to support a variety of new use cases as the database can be configured on the fly to support whatever the application needs," the company said.
Tech Pro Research
On the administration side, the beta release has new options that enable incremental backups of only data changed since the last backup, which speeds up the process and requires less storage.
Administrators will also get better control over the resource allocation of buckets, which are isolated, virtual containers that logically group records within a cluster. Pause and resume controls enable XDCR replication to be stopped and started again during maintenance.
Couchbase Server 3.0 also offers better security, with SSL encryption of data in flight between client and server, "providing secure on-the-wire data access for applications and administrators". Encrypted HTTPS access to the Couchbase administrator console and the REST API is another new feature.
For developers, SDKs offer access to integrated, native JSON, giving easier and faster app development in commonly used languages, Couchbase said. There are also asynchronous and reactive interfaces in Java and .NET for the creation of what Couchbase describes as richer applications, with better IO performance.
On top of that there are new integrations with open-source application framework Spring, coroutine-based Python networking library gevent, and event-driven networking engine Twisted, among others.
With the beta, Couchbase has also launched a Server 3.0 bug bash competition, with winners to be announced at the annual user conference in San Francisco in October.
Read more on databases and open source
- EnterpriseDB aims for easier NoSQL dev with free Postgres AWS tools
- SAP HANA: Users are struggling to see the business case
- Software licensing: This man thinks it's time someone stood up for the end user
- PostgreSQL: What's behind the pull of this open source database?
- DataStax's 4.5 Cassandra fires up Apache Spark in-memory analytics
- Couchbase CEO: Only three NoSQL firms stand out from the pack
- Oracle's in-memory option aims to beat the rest within 12 months
- Hadoop big data analytics: Can SQL support bring it to the masses?