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Comment by gecko | Hacker News Reader

I think CouchDB is vastly underrated as a hacker database for toy projects. We're talking about an incredibly simple database, with powerful replication abilities, with brain-dead administration, and one-click offsite backup and synchronization, that requires no real client libraries to work with. It makes it comically easy for me to hack on toy projects on the road, then sync them right back up afterwards when I'm done.

I know CouchDB sometimes gets some flak for not performing as well as other NoSQLs. Anecdotally, that feels as if it's gotten a lot better over time, and this BigCouch merge may improve things further, but sometimes there's a case to be made for using something just because it's fun and easy to work with.

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Why not use the community edition of couchbase?

Because Couchbase has very different features and an almost completely different interface. For example, there is no changes stream, etc.

The name lies a bit.

It's a horrible name.

Big difference for me is that Couchbase doesn't have an HTTP interface. That is one of my absolute favorite features of CouchDB (along with master-master replication and the changes stream).

I worked on both databases, they have entirely different advantages / disadvantages and use cases, none of the OP really apply to couchbase.

The only thing Couchbase has in common with CouchDB is the name, and some of the same people are involved. If you like CouchDB, there's no particular reason you'd like Couchbase (and visa versa).

The way we treat JSON is similar but the performance characteristics are radically different.

and the replication model

Here is why:

* No _changes feed. (TAPs won't do here sorry). I mean that is uber killer feature of CouchDB. Otherwise, just pick any other key value store.

* HTTP interface to DB : you can use CouchDB to store both your data and your code. That is very cool.

* Futon : that is the web based db and document browser and viewer. That is killer. Being able to see what is in your database and debug before that data is used by some other part of the system is invaluable.

We working on a new version of Futon. Adding a ton more features. Will be out later this year.

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