Cloudant vs CouchDB

Overview

Cloudant

Stacks86

Followers74

Votes28

CouchDB

Stacks529

Followers584

Votes139

GitHub Stars6.7K

Forks1.1K

Cloudant vs CouchDB: What are the differences?

Cloudant and CouchDB are both NoSQL databases that are designed to provide horizontal scalability, high availability, and seamless replication. While both databases share many similarities, there are several key differences between Cloudant and CouchDB.

Storage: One of the main differences between Cloudant and CouchDB is the underlying storage mechanism. Cloudant uses a hybrid storage engine that combines the power of both a key-value store and a document-oriented database. This allows Cloudant to provide high-performance querying and indexing capabilities. On the other hand, CouchDB uses a single-file storage model, where each document is stored as an individual file. This can lead to some performance limitations, especially when dealing with large databases.
Deployment Options: Another difference between Cloudant and CouchDB is the deployment options they offer. Cloudant is a managed database service that is hosted in the cloud and fully managed by IBM. This means that users don't have to worry about server management, backups, or infrastructure scaling, as all of these aspects are taken care of by the Cloudant team. CouchDB, on the other hand, can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, giving users more flexibility and control over their database deployment.
Replication Protocol: Cloudant and CouchDB both support replication, which allows data to be synchronized across multiple instances of the database. However, there is a difference in the replication protocol used by these databases. CouchDB uses a protocol called "Merkle Tree" replication, which ensures that only the changes between the source and target databases are transmitted over the network. This can result in faster replication and reduced bandwidth usage. Cloudant, on the other hand, uses a custom replication protocol that is optimized for their hybrid storage engine. While it still provides efficient replication, it may not be as lightweight as CouchDB's approach.
Integration with IBM Services: Cloudant is part of the IBM Cloud ecosystem and offers seamless integration with other IBM services, such as Watson, Analytics Engine, and Cloud Functions. This allows developers to leverage these services directly from their Cloudant databases and build more powerful applications. CouchDB, on the other hand, is a standalone database and does not provide the same level of integration with IBM services.
Backup and Restore: Cloudant offers automated and incremental backup and restore capabilities, allowing users to easily recover their data in case of any unforeseen events. Cloudant also provides point-in-time recovery, which allows users to restore their databases to a specific point in time. CouchDB, on the other hand, does not provide built-in backup and restore functionality. Users have to rely on manual backup strategies and third-party tools to backup and restore their CouchDB databases.
Data Centers Availability: Cloudant provides global data centers availability, which ensures that users' databases are replicated across multiple geographical locations. This allows for better data availability and disaster recovery in case of any regional outages or failures. CouchDB, on the other hand, does not offer the same level of global data center availability as Cloudant.

In Summary, Cloudant and CouchDB have several key differences, including storage mechanism, deployment options, replication protocol, integration with IBM services, backup and restore capabilities, and data center availability.

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Advice on Cloudant, CouchDB

Gabriel

CEO at Naologic

Jan 2, 2020

Decidedon

CouchDB

Couchbase

Memcached

We implemented our first large scale EPR application from naologic.com using CouchDB .

Very fast, replication works great, doesn't consume much RAM, queries are blazing fast but we found a problem: the queries were very hard to write, it took a long time to figure out the API, we had to go and write our own @nodejs library to make it work properly.

It lost most of its support. Since then, we migrated to Couchbase and the learning curve was steep but all worth it. Memcached indexing out of the box, full text search works great.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Cloudant	CouchDB
Cloudant’s distributed database as a service (DBaaS) allows developers of fast-growing web and mobile apps to focus on building and improving their products, instead of worrying about scaling and managing databases on their own.	Apache CouchDB is a database that uses JSON for documents, JavaScript for MapReduce indexes, and regular HTTP for its API. CouchDB is a database that completely embraces the web. Store your data with JSON documents. Access your documents and query your indexes with your web browser, via HTTP. Index, combine, and transform your documents with JavaScript.
Managed- Cloudant's big data experts monitor your data 24/7 to ensure its high availability and safety.;Distributed Multi-Master Database- All read and write transactions can be synced across Cloudant's global data network without global locks, providing true high availability of your data.;Geo-load Balancing- To keep latency low, our geo-load balancing infrastructure routes requests to the copies of the data that are geographically closest to the requestor.;Mobile Sync- Cloudant not only syncs between data centers around the world, but also between data centers and mobile devices.;Incremental MapReduce- Unlike Hadoop, Cloudant’s Incremental MapReduce keeps indexes up-to-date with new transactions and updates without requiring a full reindexing of your data.;Integrated Lucene Search- High-performance full-text indexing and search, without the difficulty and cost of managing text and operational data in separate databases.	Terrific single-node database; Clustered database ; HTTP/JSON; Offline first data sync
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 6.7K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 1.1K
Stacks 86	Stacks 529
Followers 74	Followers 584
Votes 28	Votes 139
Pros & Cons
Pros 13 JSON 7 REST interface 4 Cheap 3 JavaScript support 1 Great syncing	Pros 43 JSON 30 Open source 18 Highly available 12 Partition tolerant 11 Eventual consistency
Integrations
AppHarbor Heroku Microsoft Azure Amazon EC2 SoftLayer CloudBees Joyent Cloud Rackspace Cloud Servers cloudControl	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Cloudant, CouchDB?

MongoDB

MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.

MySQL

The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL Server is intended for mission-critical, heavy-load production systems as well as for embedding into mass-deployed software.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types and functions.

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft® SQL Server is a database management and analysis system for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions.

SQLite

SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. Unlike most other SQL databases, SQLite does not have a separate server process. SQLite reads and writes directly to ordinary disk files. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file.

Cassandra

Partitioning means that Cassandra can distribute your data across multiple machines in an application-transparent matter. Cassandra will automatically repartition as machines are added and removed from the cluster. Row store means that like relational databases, Cassandra organizes data by rows and columns. The Cassandra Query Language (CQL) is a close relative of SQL.

Memcached

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

MariaDB

Started by core members of the original MySQL team, MariaDB actively works with outside developers to deliver the most featureful, stable, and sanely licensed open SQL server in the industry. MariaDB is designed as a drop-in replacement of MySQL(R) with more features, new storage engines, fewer bugs, and better performance.

RethinkDB

RethinkDB is built to store JSON documents, and scale to multiple machines with very little effort. It has a pleasant query language that supports really useful queries like table joins and group by, and is easy to setup and learn.

Amazon DynamoDB

With it , you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available distributed database cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.

Related Comparisons

Cloudant vs CouchDB: What are the differences?

Storage: One of the main differences between Cloudant and CouchDB is the underlying storage mechanism. Cloudant uses a hybrid storage engine that combines the power of both a key-value store and a document-oriented database. This allows Cloudant to provide high-performance querying and indexing capabilities. On the other hand, CouchDB uses a single-file storage model, where each document is stored as an individual file. This can lead to some performance limitations, especially when dealing with large databases.
Deployment Options: Another difference between Cloudant and CouchDB is the deployment options they offer. Cloudant is a managed database service that is hosted in the cloud and fully managed by IBM. This means that users don't have to worry about server management, backups, or infrastructure scaling, as all of these aspects are taken care of by the Cloudant team. CouchDB, on the other hand, can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, giving users more flexibility and control over their database deployment.
Replication Protocol: Cloudant and CouchDB both support replication, which allows data to be synchronized across multiple instances of the database. However, there is a difference in the replication protocol used by these databases. CouchDB uses a protocol called "Merkle Tree" replication, which ensures that only the changes between the source and target databases are transmitted over the network. This can result in faster replication and reduced bandwidth usage. Cloudant, on the other hand, uses a custom replication protocol that is optimized for their hybrid storage engine. While it still provides efficient replication, it may not be as lightweight as CouchDB's approach.
Integration with IBM Services: Cloudant is part of the IBM Cloud ecosystem and offers seamless integration with other IBM services, such as Watson, Analytics Engine, and Cloud Functions. This allows developers to leverage these services directly from their Cloudant databases and build more powerful applications. CouchDB, on the other hand, is a standalone database and does not provide the same level of integration with IBM services.
Backup and Restore: Cloudant offers automated and incremental backup and restore capabilities, allowing users to easily recover their data in case of any unforeseen events. Cloudant also provides point-in-time recovery, which allows users to restore their databases to a specific point in time. CouchDB, on the other hand, does not provide built-in backup and restore functionality. Users have to rely on manual backup strategies and third-party tools to backup and restore their CouchDB databases.
Data Centers Availability: Cloudant provides global data centers availability, which ensures that users' databases are replicated across multiple geographical locations. This allows for better data availability and disaster recovery in case of any regional outages or failures. CouchDB, on the other hand, does not offer the same level of global data center availability as Cloudant.

Cloudant vs CouchDB

Overview