Couchbase Server 3.0 Extends Performance and Scalability Lead Over Oracle, MongoDB, and Cassandra in Distributed Database Technology

San Francisco, CA – October 6, 2014 – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Couchbase, Inc., provider of the most complete NoSQL database, today announced at its Couchbase Connect 2014 conference that it has released Couchbase Server 3.0, its most significant release to date.  The 3.0 release, available today, introduces more than 200 new features and enhancements, including major extensions to its core architecture that advance the company’s lead in delivering the industry’s most scalable, reliable and consistently high-performance distributed database. This release expands Couchbase Server to support an even broader set of enterprise and big data use cases.

“Couchbase is setting the agenda for scalable, high-performance distributed database technology, with innovations like being first to integrate a distributed cache with key-value storage and a document database in a single platform, and delivering the first NoSQL mobile database,” said Couchbase CEO Bob Wiederhold. “We continue to make huge advances in foundational database technologies, including storage, mobility, query, and performance. With Couchbase Server 3.0, we’ve significantly broadened the use cases we can support so more enterprises can join leaders like AT&T, Walmart and eBay, who run high performance mission critical apps on Couchbase.”

3.0 Major Architectural Extensions

Modern enterprises require the ability to easily and elastically scale mission critical applications, and to cost effectively handle very large and constantly growing data sets. Couchbase Server 3.0 delivers major foundational advancements – including stream-based Database Change Protocol and Dynamically Tunable Memory – that dramatically improve scalability, resilience, performance, and the cost-efficiency of working with massive operational data sets. In independent benchmarks, Couchbase has already demonstrated industry-leading scalability and performance, outperforming competitors by up to 13x in read/write throughput. The architectural advances in the 3.0 release further extend Couchbase’s lead, resulting in performance improvements ranging from 2x to 100s of times in magnitude. In addition, the 3.0 release includes new capabilities that improve the developer experience, enhance reliability and security, and streamline administration. 

3.0 Major Benefits

With these powerful new capabilities, Couchbase Server 3.0 delivers major benefits to enterprises, administrators, and developers, further raising the bar on enterprise-grade NoSQL technology. These benefits include:

• Enterprises can work with massive operational data sets in a much more cost efficient way, achieving dramatically greater output and value from their existing hardware resources.
• Enterprises can deploy Couchbase Server to support an even wider range of use cases, reducing or eliminating the need for other databases and distributed caches, thereby lowering costs and complexity.
• Administrators will find the Couchbase Server 3.0 console is more powerful than ever before with numerous enhancements that greatly simplify, secure and streamline management of their Couchbase deployment.
• Developers can build high performance, scalable applications faster and more easily with newly released 2.0 Couchbase SDKs — which now provide built-in application programming interfaces for JSON, support for reactive programming models, a common user experience across all APIs, as well as integration with popular frameworks including Spring Data, Python Twisted, and Python gevent.   The Couchbase Open Source community is also creating new frameworks for emerging platforms such as Ottoman for Node.js. All together these enable developers to build applications with far less effort and coding.

3.0 Key Features Overview

Couchbase Server 3.0 introduces major features and advancements in five key areas:  mission critical scale and performance, ultra-high availability, secure communication, enterprise grade administration and developer empowerment.

Mission Critical Scale and Performance

New Tunable Memory Optimizes Resource Efficiency for Massive Datasets

The 3.0 release delivers an innovative, new Dynamically Tunable Memory capability, which enables enterprises to support a much broader range of use cases.  With Tunable Memory, it is now possible to control — at runtime — how much data is kept in memory and how much data is kept on disk, optimizing the use of resources based on the application’s performance needs.

New Streaming Protocol Delivers Numerous Performance Improvements

Couchbase Server introduces the industry’s first and only stream-based Database Change Protocol (DCP), a major extension to Couchbase Server’s unique, memory-centric architecture. High-performance distributed databases need to move large amounts of data with extreme frequency throughout the system for a wide range of functions including rebalancing, replication and recovery. While other databases use disk-based communication, Couchbase Server’s DCP communicates in-memory, thereby removing disk IO dependencies and latency, and delivering speeds of more than 100x faster than disk based protocols.

DCP is also engineered to enable more efficient, intelligent and fine-grained resiliency, recovery, and data management capabilities, such as pause and resume replication, incremental backup, and more.

Faster Indexing and View Consistency

Leveraging the new stream-based DCP, Couchbase Server 3.0 updates indexes and views at blazing speed, by communicating changes in memory as they happen instead of having to read changes from disk. As a result, users will see major improvements in indexing latency – up to 50x better – further extending the spectrum of use cases that Couchbase can support.

Optimized Resource Utilization for Extreme Throughput

The 3.0 release automates tuning of read and write resource utilization, dramatically reducing latency and maximizing IO throughput, all completely hands free. Couchbase Server automatically detects the hardware it’s running on and auto-tunes the thread pool for optimal efficiency, even as underlying resources and workload patterns change.

Ultra High Availability

Low Latency, In-Memory XDCR

Leveraging the new streaming Database Change Protocol, Couchbase Server 3.0 enables memory-to-memory cross data center replication (XDCR), decreasing latency by up to 4x. The 3.0 release also enhances the efficiency and sophistication of XDCR: when there are network interruptions to the replication process, the system detects where it left off and resumes precisely from that point, resulting in greater resource efficiency.

Faster, More Efficient Backup with New Incremental Option

Couchbase Server 3.0 includes a new incremental backup option, in addition to the previously available full backup. The incremental option backs up only data that has changed since the previous backup, which requires less storage and time to complete, and enables more frequent backups.

Optimized Recovery with Faster Restore Options

Couchbase Server 3.0 provides new options for recovering from a failed node – up to 8x faster node reactivation — delivering improved business continuity and optimized disaster recovery.

Enterprise Grade Administration

XDCR Pause and Resume

Couchbase Server 3.0 includes a new pause and resume capability for cross-data center replication (XDCR) that makes maintenance much easier and more efficient.

Faster, More Resilient Rebalancing

Delta Node Recovery, a new feature in Couchbase Server 3.0, greatly simplifies the rebalancing process to deliver faster, more resilient rebalancing.

Improved Replication with Incremental Catch-up

Leveraging the new high-performance streaming Database Change Protocol (DCP), Couchbase Server 3.0 introduces a new incremental catch-up capability to deliver faster, more efficient replication when failed nodes are recovered.

Improved Resource Governance with Bucket Priority

Couchbase Server 3.0 includes a new capability that further streamlines administration — as well as helps maximize resource efficiency — by enabling administrators to prioritize “buckets” for different applications. Administrators can assign high and low priorities, so that high priority buckets get higher IO priority and more throughput, while low priority buckets can still be processed without starvation.

Graceful Failover for Forced Node Failure

In addition to the standard auto-failover function in the case of a node failure, Couchbase Server 3.0 includes a new “graceful failover” option for administrators. With a push of a button, the new option enables an administrator to force a node to failover — typically to perform maintenance on the node — with zero data loss on that node.

Developer Empowerment

Couchbase today also announced the release of the new Couchbase 2.0 SDKs, providing numerous new features and capabilities for developers to build high performance, scalable applications on Couchbase Server.

Consistent Developer Experience

Delivering a consistent developer experience across all platforms makes it easy for developers who work in multiple languages to build applications on Couchbase regardless of which language they are using.  In the 2.0 SDKs the commands and methods are unified across all developer platforms.

Native Support for JSON Objects

When working in any SDK, native JSON object types are supported, eliminating the requirement for third party libraries while maintaining the flexibility Couchbase has always had to support other data types.

Improved Connection Management

The 2.0 SDKs use fewer resources to communicate with Couchbase.  Connections are more intelligently administered and better-managed extending Couchbase’s significant lead in high performance operations.

Framework Integrations

Couchbase SDKs include support for Spring Framework and ASP.NET alongside Node.js frameworks under active development in the Couchbase Open Source community.

Preview Support for Next-Generation Query Language

Couchbase 2.0 SDKs provide experimental support for N1QL, Couchbase’s next-generation query language that’s in development and available in Developer Preview. N1QL presents easy and familiar approaches to query and data manipulation.  This allows developers to quickly create scalable applications with its support for joins, filter expressions, aggregate expressions and many other features needed when building rich applications.

Secure Communication

Encryption for Data Access

Couchbase Server 3.0 raises the bar on NoSQL security with encrypted data access. SSL encrypts data in-flight between client and server, providing secure on-the-wire data access for applications and administrators so your data can’t be seen or tampered with.

Encryption for Administrative Access

Couchbase Server 3.0 also provides encrypted administrative access, enabling HTTPS access for the Couchbase admin console and the REST API. 

OTHER NEWS:

Couchbase Connect Conference in San Francisco

With over 1,400 registrants, Couchbase today commences its two-day Couchbase Connect 2014 conference in San Francisco. In addition to announcing the release of Couchbase Server 3.0, the company will preview breakthrough technologies for data storage and query. 

Beta Release of ForestDB Storage Engine

Couchbase has announced the beta release of ForestDB, a new key-value storage engine designed to operate at ultra fast speeds. In benchmarking tests, ForestDB significantly outperformed key-value data stores designed by Facebook (RocksDB) and Google (LevelDB).

Couchbase Hadoop Connector

Couchbase announced general availability of the latest version of the Couchbase Hadoop Connector supporting Cloudera Enterprise 5.  This new integration simplifies the development and management of big data infrastructure in the enterprise.

Couchbase and Wipro Partner to Bring Scalable, High Performance NoSQL to Enterprises

Couchbase and Wipro announced a global system integrator and reseller agreement.  The partnership will enable both Couchbase and Wipro to better serve the increasing global demand for enterprise class NoSQL to support mission critical applications and big data needs of enterprise customers.

Couchbase and Simba Partner to Deliver ODBC and JDBC Connectivity

Couchbase and Simba Technologies announced a joint partnership to deliver ODBC and JDBC connectivity for Couchbase Server. Under terms of the agreement, Couchbase selected Simba Technologies to build ODBC 3.8 and JDBC 4.0 connectivity drivers for the Couchbase NoSQL database.

Additional Resources

• ForestDB
• 2014 NoSQL High Performance Benchmark
• Follow @Couchbase on Twitter