As of Couchbase 2.0 you can use observe-functions in the SDKs to determine the status of a document in Couchbase Server. This provides a level of assurance in your application that data will be available in spite of node failure.

For instance, you may want to create a ticketing application and you want to place a hold on tickets while you perform a credit card authorization to pay for the ticket. If a node fails during that time, you may not be able to recover the current state of the ticket, and determine whether it was on hold for a user, or not. If the ticket is in RAM only, you may not be able to retrieve the ticket at all. By using an observe command, you can determine whether the ticket is persisted or whether it has been replicated. You can then determine if you retrieve the ticket state you can get the most current version that is on disk.

This section describes when you would want to use observe-functions and how to implement it in your application.