What Happened to CouchDB’s Popularity?
A lot of this is the result of the confusion in the community, there is the CouchDB Apache project, then the CouchBase work and their own “Single Server” releases that don’t necessarily map 1:1 to the Apache versions.
Then there is the CouchBase “Couch Server” offering which, from what little I can tell, is membase + CouchDB and their CouchDB build, according to their docs, isn’t 100% 1:1 with the Apache CouchDB builds (some differences about protocol or something).
Then you have no officially maintained libraries for the different platforms which was a turn off to me the first time I cracked that egg open.
Then you have CouchBase wanting to focus Couch on the mobile-cloud story since they are the only NoSQL solution doing that , with native builds for some of the mobile platforms.
Then you have BigCouch and IrisCouch and a slew of other things I can’t figure out where they fit in.
Ultimately when you enter the eco system and start digging, it is hard to figure out exactly what “CouchDB” is, where to grab binaries for your platform from and drivers for your platform. As wavephorm pointed out, you can figure it all out with some reading and digging, but you have to persist.
It’s not like Mongo, you don’t just head to the official site, grab the official binary and install the official driver.
I’d also point out that CouchDB’s biggest feature, the must-have feature no other NoSQL repo besides RavenDB replicates, is the master-master replication. If you don’t need that, your barrier to entry with the other NoSQL solutions is much easier/straight forward.
I hope at some point the CouchDB community focuses their efforts on barriers to entries and figures out a common message for beginners they can communicate, and from there introduce the customizations for the people that need them (mobile Couch, BigCouch, etc.)
If only they would have listened to what I’ve been saying all this time.
Original title and link: What Happened to CouchDB’s Popularity? (©myNoSQL)
