{"id":7363,"date":"2019-08-09T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T17:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/?p=7363"},"modified":"2023-05-25T04:29:32","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T11:29:32","slug":"introducing-collections-developer-preview-in-couchbase-server-6-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.couchbase.com\/blog\/introducing-collections-developer-preview-in-couchbase-server-6-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro to Collections – Dev Preview in Couchbase Server 6.5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Couchbase, a document database, allows great flexibility in storing different types of documents in a single bucket (bucket being the equivalent of a database). There is a frequent need to refer to documents of a similar type together e.g. an apparel retailer may want to separate out all clothes from all shoes. They can do this today with Couchbase by using key prefixes or type fields, but it does make the application more cumbersome.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Having containerization of similar items at the database layer not only makes the application simpler but allows for efficiencies in data processing at its lowest levels. Further, having additional levels of containment under buckets allow for access control at a finer granularity than buckets. <\/span><\/p>\n

This opens the door for having a more scalable multi-tenant platform with Couchbase than using buckets would allow. It is with these goals that we developed the feature referred to as \u2018Collections\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Couchbase Server 6.5 makes available a Developer Preview of Collections.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this blog, I will describe at a high level what collections are, what use cases they enable, and the functionality they provide. Sample code is shown in this <\/span>blog post by Johan<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Note: A Developer Preview feature cannot be used in production. Read detailed guidelines regarding Developer Preview here: <\/span><\/i>Developer Preview Documentation<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What are Collections?<\/span><\/h2>\n

They are logical data containers inside a Couchbase bucket that group similar data, just like a \u2018Table\u2019 does in a relational database.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also another level available for data organization called \u2018Scope\u2019 similar to a \u2018Schema\u2019 in a relational database. The namespace within each scope is independent of others, hence you can have the same collection names in different scopes. Similarly, document keys need to be unique only within a collection and hence documents with the same key can exist in different collections.<\/span><\/p>\n

With this new introduction, role-based access controls can now be applied at the cluster, bucket, scope and collection levels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Note: The Developer Preview does not have the scope and collection-level RBAC but it will be available with the production version in Couchbase 7.0.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

For a seamless upgrade, and for backward compatibility, every bucket has a \u2018_default\u2019 scope and the \u2018_default\u2019 scope has a \u2018_default\u2019 collection. The _default collection provides backward compatibility as a direct reference to the bucket will automatically map to the _default collection. Also, on upgrade, all existing data will automatically go to the _default collection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the _default collection is provided as a backward compatibility mechanism, it is recommended that new applications should be written using a named collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"an<\/p>\n

Simplified Data Organization with Collections<\/span><\/h2>\n

As mentioned earlier, the new logical groupings enable better data organization, similar to tables in a relational database.
\nBenefits include:<\/span><\/p>\n