Couchbase serves up 6.6 with developer agility & tranquility
Couchbase is that company we know because its name start with Couch, which in this context is used as an acronym for Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware.
We also know Couchbase as the creator of a multi-cloud-to-edge NoSQL database, which is eponymously named Couchbase Server.
The technology has just reached its 6.6 version iteration and there’s developer goodness here…
… Couchbase 6.6 introduces two ‘clever and helpful’ (it says on the packet) indexing capabilities for application developers who would rather not need to think about indexes.
First, it has promoted its “Index Advisor” functionality (which started its developer preview inclusion in Couchbase 6.5) — Index Advisor analyzss N1QL (“Nickel”) queries and returns advice on what indexes to use or build to optimally expedite results.
TECHNICAL NOTE: N1QL (pronounced “nickel”) is Couchbase’s query language that aims to meet the query needs of distributed document-oriented databases.
Ravi Mayuram, SVP of engineering and CTO of Couchbase says that the enhanced analytics shipping in the last version provide insights into data stored externally in S3 as well data in multiple Couchbase operational databases.
“The new Flex Indexes exponentially simplifies index management for developers — and with the ability to backup directly to S3, Couchbase 6.6, overall, greatly improves developer and operational agility,” said Mayuram.
The company claims that Flex Indexes are a ‘database first’.
Tranquility for developers
Flex Indexes allow N1QL queries to use indexes from Full Text Search to simplify complex query selections as often found in ad-hoc and forms-based queries. Like Index Advisor, Flex Indexes remove the need for developers to contemplate what or how to index their database. Ah, tranquility… and now breathe.
“Strengthening support for hybrid transactional and analytic processing (HTAP) workloads, Couchbase 6.6 has extended its analytic offering by enabling the construction of dedicated analytic clusters that use ‘Remote Links’ to consolidate operational data from multiple Couchbase clusters for larger, more cost-effective analysis,” explained Mayuram.
The analytics service also adds the ability to access and analyze ‘External Data’ in standard file formats such as JSON, .CSV and .TSV from AWS S3.
Additional features in version 6.6 include: 1) geospatial searches to support polygon areas, 2) multiple timer and timer cancellation capabilities for the Eventing service, 3) backup capabilities that enable backups to AWS S3 and S3-compatible object stores, 4) enterprise security enhancements that include non-root installation options, and 5) data import capabilities now included in the Couchbase UI.
The company has blogged further on the release.
Image source: Couchbase