Today’s applications need to deliver a great experience to users anywhere, all the time. For business-critical applications, there is no downtime, they must support customers 24/7, 365. Applications are being architected to run on micro-services and to be developed in a flexible, agile environment. Many applications also need to gather data from numerous personal edge devices to provide a personalized customer experience.

Modern database demands: agility, scalability, mobility

The surge in application development has led to a radical change in database demands. Modern databases must be able to handle enormous amounts of data and service a large number of users, without interruption. They must be able to perform at scale, have the flexibility to support agile development and be able to scale up or down based on user traffic and specific workload demands. Modern databases must also include a mobile platform to support IoT-based requirements.

MongoDB is a popular general-purpose NoSQL database. But for many enterprises, it presents too many challenges for their modern use cases. Common complaints with MongoDB include scalability issues and performance, insufficient support for JOINs and ACID transactions, and a proprietary query language that is not familiar to most developers and data analysts. 

Couchbase is the modern database for enterprise applications. It is the only database that combines the benefits of NoSQL with the benefits of SQL. The strengths of relational databases include schemas that provide data structure, tables that segregate data, SQL querying and ACID transaction support to ensure data integrity. The strength of NoSQL databases include flexible schemas assigned as data is read, multi-model data access and independent data processing services. 

Some of the particular benefits of Couchbase include:

  • deploy everywhere capability using DBaaS, Kubernetes, replication across clouds, mobile and edge devices
  • auto-scaling, backups, rebalancing, XDCR (Cross Data Center Replication)
  • support for schemas and tables via Couchbase scopes and collections, respectively
  • query support for Joins between documents and to external data
  • ACID transactions and user-defined functions (UDF) support
  • SQL support that developers are already familiar with, shortening the learning curve
  • Couchbase Mobile is a proven mobile solution that allows offline use with syncing back to the server and peer-to-peer communication.
  • masterless architecture, all nodes can read/write
  • built-in services like Analytics, Eventing, and Full-text search (FTS) help minimize sprawl.
  • consistent latency (unlike MongoDB) even with vertical/horizontal scaling. Couchbase latency is predictable and flat even as the node count increases

The relational vs. NoSQL database debate has effectively been ended by the Couchbase platform. Couchbase clients have the best of both worlds.

All of these benefits are available in the Couchbase Server platform which can be run on-prem, installed on any of the major clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) and via Couchbase Capella, a fully managed DBaaS.

Performance/cost evaluation

In recent performance head-to-head tests, Couchbase Capella outperforms MongoDB Atlas in both latency and throughput and at a lower cost point. This advantage can be seen in the graphs below for a 50% read, 50% update workload for 6 and 9 node clusters. The workload simulates a critical eCommerce web application where users are browsing and their actions are being stored back in the database. 

Capella delivers exceptional performance compared to Atlas with 7 times higher throughput and 60X lower latency. Couchbase also has a lower cost per billion of operations (throughput costs per dollar) because of its much higher throughput capacity.

Multi-purpose requirements: cache, source of truth, system of record, edge sync

Customers utilize Couchbase for a variety of use cases across a wide range of applications to improve performance, scalability, data flexibility, etc. Generally, our customers start with workloads for caching or data aggregation. But many customers also use Couchbase as a system of record for source-of-truth applications such as user profile management and to support mobile apps from the edge all the way to the cloud. Mobile features include critical modern functions like offline data access and remote data syncing. 

The analytics service supports real-time analysis of data in Couchbase and can connect to data stores like AWS S3 and Azure blob store. Customers can query data from within the Couchbase UI that is not stored in the database via remote links and can chart that data in the UI or using BI tools like Tableau and PowerBI.

Why Uplevel From MongoDB to Couchbase?  Because Couchbase helps organizations meet business goals like faster time to market, increasing customer satisfaction and cost reduction. It is built on a memory-first architecture and requires no configuration node. If you missed our webinar last week on this topic, be sure to check out the replay which is available on demand, here.

Unlike MongoDB, all Couchbase nodes are workers which means the Couchbase database can process more data with lower node counts while maintaining consistently low latency even as clusters scale. The result is better performance and a much higher ROI than our competitors. 

Start to take advantage of these benefits for your use cases with the following resources:

*Note this independent benchmark report was commissioned by Couchbase.

Author

Posted by Rick Jacobs

Rick Jacobs is the Technical Product Marketing Manager at Couchbase. His varied background includes experience at many of the world’s leading organizations such as Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, Cloudera etc. He comes with over 15 years of general technology experience garnered from serving in development, consulting, data science, sales engineering and technical marketing roles. He holds several academic degrees including an MS in Computational Science from George Mason University.

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