ApacheCon EU 2014

Apache CouchDB - an acronym for Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware - is a database that uses JSON for documents, JavaScript for MapReduce indexes, and regular HTTP for its API. To date, individual servers support multi-master replication, but do not actually act as a server cluster. In this presentation, Joan Touzet will cover the recent merge of the BigCouch fork in advance of the release of CouchDB 2.0. This significant work enhances CouchDB with a native Erlang-based clustering mechanism, supporting high availability, database partitioning and DynamoDB-inspired enhanced read/write semantics. Special attention will be given to new functionality, operational considerations from Cloudant's experience running this code for years in production, upgrade scenarios for existing users and the exciting new Fauxton UI.

Modern IT is mobile, but existing technologies are struggling to address the unique issues of our mobile infrastructure. From portable laptops to tablets and rarely connected phones, the demands from end user devices for our IT infrastructures are not only novel, they are hard. Apache CouchDB has been designed from the ground up to address all relevant issues. This talk will explain the challenges of the mobile world, where huge latency, intermittent connectivity and limited device capacity and computing power long for smart technology that solves it all and how CouchDB is the super hero that saves the day. We’ll look into mobile web and native apps, the fundamentals of data syntonisation, and how sync is the foundation for robust Offline First architectures and user experiences.

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) users data management service at The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), named AsyncStageOut, manages more than 300k users' files per day of close to 1000 individual users per month with minimal delays, and providing a real time monitoring to users and service operators, while being highly available. The associated data volume represents a new set of challenges in the areas of database scalability and service performance and efficiency.
The service is designed as a thin application relying only on CouchDB as input and data storage. It has progressed from a limited prototype to a highly adaptable service, which manages and monitors the whole CMS user files steps.
In this presentation, Hassen Riahi will provide an overview of the AsyncStageOut model, present the motivations for using CouchDB, describe the deployment model and discuss the results achieved.