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Apache CouchDB

Master CouchDB: document database with HTTP API, multi-master replication, and eventual consistency.

35 min readIntermediate
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What is Apache CouchDB?

Apache CouchDB is a document-oriented NoSQL database that uses JSON for documents, JavaScript for MapReduce indexes, and HTTP for its API. It's designed for web applications and emphasizes eventual consistency and master-master replication.

Key Features

  • • Document-oriented storage with JSON
  • • RESTful HTTP/JSON API
  • • Multi-master replication
  • • MVCC (Multi-Version Concurrency Control)
  • • Built-in web interface (Fauxton)
  • • MapReduce views for querying

CouchDB Performance Calculator

3 replicas
2 KB
1,000 reads/sec
500 writes/sec

Performance Metrics

Estimated Storage:5063 GB
Throughput:3 MB/s
Availability:100.08%
Replication Latency:45 ms

Real-World Examples

NPM Registry

NPM uses CouchDB to store package metadata and handle millions of package downloads daily.

  • • 2+ million packages stored as JSON documents
  • • Multi-master replication across global CDN
  • • RESTful API for package management

BBC

BBC uses CouchDB for content management and real-time collaboration on news articles.

  • • Offline-first journalism workflow
  • • Multi-master replication for field reporters
  • • Conflict-free collaborative editing

Financial Services

Banks use CouchDB for mobile banking apps requiring offline synchronization.

  • • 500K+ customer records replicated to mobile devices
  • • Eventual consistency for account balances
  • • Audit trail with document versioning

Basic Operations

Creating and Querying Documents
// Connect to CouchDB
const nano = require('nano')('http://localhost:5984');
const db = nano.use('users');

// Create a document
const user = {
  _id: 'user123',
  name: 'John Doe',
  email: 'john@example.com',
  created: new Date().toISOString()
};

await db.insert(user);

// Read a document
const doc = await db.get('user123');
console.log(doc.name); // 'John Doe'

// Update a document
doc.last_login = new Date().toISOString();
await db.insert(doc);

// Create a MapReduce view
const designDoc = {
  _id: '_design/users',
  views: {
    by_email: {
      map: function(doc) {
        if (doc.email) {
          emit(doc.email, doc);
        }
      }
    }
  }
};

await db.insert(designDoc);

// Query the view
const result = await db.view('users', 'by_email', {
  key: 'john@example.com'
});

Best Practices

✅ Do

  • Use meaningful document IDs for better performance
  • Design views carefully - they're your primary query mechanism
  • Embrace eventual consistency in your application design
  • Use bulk operations for better performance
  • Implement proper conflict resolution strategies

❌ Don't

  • Use CouchDB for complex relational queries
  • Create views that emit large documents
  • Ignore document size limits (4GB max)
  • Assume immediate consistency across replicas
  • Use sequential document IDs in high-write scenarios
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