If that’s the case, we encourage you to take a minute to venture back. In part one we discussed sync and replication. Part two followed with a discussion of CouchDB’s built-in web interface and its versatile secondary indexing capabilities.

In addition to the aforementioned features, our interviews uncovered other favored CouchDB features such as its application data model consistency, its support for clustering, and its schema flexibility.

Paul Davis spoke to application data model consistency saying that most people think of this as replication but one of the things that he’s always liked about CouchDB is how an application can reuse the same data model regardless of programming language or deployment environment. He also added that no schema was a top benefit. He shared that the relational model is great for relational data, but not all structured data fits that model.

Developer Garren Smith mentioned that he liked the fact that CouchDB is a proven technology, and a database you can trust. He also spoke to the benefit of version 2’s support for clustering, stating that it is a lot more fault-tolerant.

In speaking of fault tolerance, Nick Vatamaniuc stated that CouchDB’s simple and robust design is resilient in the face of crashes and power failures. Data is always appended to the end of database files and never directly re-written. Nick shared that because it is written in Erlang, if some parts of the database crash they automatically restart, while the rest of the database core stays up and serves client requests.

To swing things back to Paul, his third top benefit was the declaration that Erlang is a wonderful language for operations, stating that the ability to open up a shell on a node that’s misbehaving to diagnose bugs and misbehaviors is invaluable.

Another thing that’s invaluable is the contributions made by the CouchDB developers.

We look forward to sharing more of what we’ve learned through our interviews and will continue sharing their insights with the CouchDB readers. Next up, we will discuss some developer advice to those new to the platform as well as some specifics on the future of CouchDB. Stay tuned!