Powerful NoSQL queries and performance at scale
N1QL is a JSON query language for executing industry-standard ANSI joins and querying, transforming, and manipulating JSON data – just like SQL. With native support for N1QL, Couchbase allows you to visualize and optimize complex query plans for large datasets, deliver the best performance at any scale, and meet the demands of millions of users.
SELECT name, ship_date FROM `orders` WHERE orderno = 1004;
Solve your toughest adoption and production challenges with an intuitive NoSQL query language
High migration cost
Most other JSON databases have limited SQL support, or none at all. This makes the migration of applications very expensive because you must rewrite the data access layer and retrain developers.
Unpredictable performance
Application performance changes with data volume, and when the database lacks a sophisticated query optimizer. Couchbase query service now includes cost-based optimization to ensure the best performance.
Data inconsistencies
When you have limited support of efficient data access, joins, and aggregation, this forces frequent schema and index changes, which leads to data duplication and inconsistencies.
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N1QL: SQL-like queries and the flexibility of JSON
Develop engaging applications with ease using a comprehensive and declarative JSON query language. Developers can rapidly adapt to changing business requirements using a schemaless JSON document store.
Learn N1QL in 10 minutes
Query without compromise, scale without limits
A high-performance NoSQL query engine with built-in optimizer and indexer enables millions of concurrent interactions with sub-millisecond latencies. Couchbase’s multi-dimensional architecture leverages index partitioning to elastically scale data capacity, delivering accelerated query performance.
N1QL: A practical guideVisually design your queries with ease
The premium user interface of the Query Workbench allows you to optimize NoSQL queries by visually profiling the execution plan. Transparent partitioning and automatic replication of the indexes deliver high availability and performance for business-critical applications.
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"Developers simply write a declarative query language and the query engine decides the optimal path, and gives the answers they want."
Keshav Murthy
Senior Director of Research and Development, Couchbase
Related features and capabilities
Global Secondary Indexes (GSI)
Global Secondary Indexing (GSI) is a powerful solution that enables secondary lookup queries for interactive applications that require low latencies.
Learn moreQuery Workbench
The Query Workbench provides a rich graphical user interface to perform query development. You can conveniently visualize query plans to profile and optimize NoSQL queries. You can also explore query results and the document structures in a bucket – all in a single window.
Learn moreMulti-Dimensional Scaling (MDS)
Scale out the service you need, when you need it. MDS guarantees the predictable performance of individual services deployed under Couchbase by delivering workload isolation of various microservices such as query, full-text search, analytics, and more.
Learn moreFull-Text Search (FTS)
Liberate your JSON data with language-aware text searching that enables users to quickly obtain the most relevant documents based on scoring. As part of the Couchbase data platform, FTS keeps search indexes up to date in real time as documents change.
Learn moreSolutions
Customer 360
Aggregate data collected from different sources in one platform to build a single view of your customer or business.
Catalog and Inventory
Publish new product and inventory content in real time and scale to millions of products and requests per second to present the right data at the right time.
Field Service
One platform to manage data from different sources, push it to the edge, and ensure it is stored securely and available online and offline.
IoT Data Management
Manage, support, and drive real-time data insights at the edge with embedded and cloud databases, sync, and guaranteed data availability.
"When Couchbase introduced me to N1QL, we quickly realized that N1QL offers the flexibility to search with a language that looks 99 percent the same as SQL. So for all developers, it was an easy transition."
DIRECTV, one of the world’s leading providers of digital television entertainment services, runs software to support 38 million customers globally on 3,000 channels. DIRECTV discovered Couchbase’s performance to be unparalleled and leverages N1QL using Node.js.
Learn more38M+
customers
3K+
channels
Before switching to N1QL and Couchbase, SQL was Cvent’s go-to for getting insights from data. Migrating proved to be a breeze and benefits accrued immediately. With N1QL, Cvent gained the ability to define their own data with schemaless data modeling and create their own queries using multiple indexing options. As a result, Cvent today uses Couchbase across 8 development clusters and 45 teams to develop and run hundreds of microservices.
Learn more8
development clusters
100+
microservices
By applying Couchbase’s N1QL and Full-Text Search (FTS) over machine learning in the Google Cloud, Seenit provides its customers with an incredibly powerful search function that allows them to filter submissions by objects in the video, specific words or phrases in the audio, video and audio quality, sentiment, and many other attributes. N1QL enables Seenit to sort, filter, transform, group, and combine data from multiple JSON documents with a single query.
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After adopting N1QL, eBay doubled its number of Couchbase use cases and increased its number of Couchbase nodes 5x while handling 80 billion Couchbase calls per day.
Learn more80B+
Couchbase calls per day
Nielsen’s Answers on Demand (AOD) service delivers ratings data and other information for businesses in more than 100 countries. Nielsen currently uses Couchbase as a document store and heavily leverages N1QL for big data analytics.
Learn more50%
boost in response time
